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Bingo the game of Queens!
It is generally believed that bingo originated in Italy in the 16th century around the year 1530 where a game called “Lo Giuoco del Lotto D'Italia” which is still played weekly in Italy, the game then developed over the next few centuries being played in France by wealthy women where it was known as “Le Lotto” in the 1770’s and in Germany in the 1800’s, however in Germany it was played by children and used as an educational game. The premise eventually arrived in America where the game we know now was first developed, however players would mark their cards with beans I believe and it was known as Beano, the name Bingo is believed to have come when a player won and screamed bingo in excitement. By 1930 Carl Leffler a university professor had made 6,000 different winning bingo card combinations, he later went insane.
The game went from strength to strength with people becoming addicted to the simple game of chance with the opportunity to win big. The biggest development in the history of bingo was the introduction of online bingo in about 2001, in only seven years it has enjoyed a phenomenal surge in popularity with people from all demographics (men, women, young and old) have begun playing. It is so popular that some mainstream tabloid newspapers have set up their own bingo websites, advertising on all forms of the media, television, radio, newspapers and magazines, the internet itself. It has become so popular that simply having bingo on your site isn’t good enough to draw people in now; other enticing offers are needed to allure people to your site! For example Littlewoods are currently offering tickets to see Westlife, totally unrelated to bingo but it attracts people to play on their site. There is an estimated 100 million online bingo game players worldwide!
Bingo is an opportunity to win a lot of money quite quickly and it is totally random, the numbers you are given and the numbers drawn, Christine Bradfield won 1.1 million pounds in January this year making her the richest winner in bingo history. Bingo news stories such as this encourage people to play bingo as it is seen as an easier form of the lottery with more chances to win and with fewer participants. The online bingo websites have ridiculous amounts of money available to win, giving up to £25,000 a day away in winnings and there are lots of websites to choose from.
It’s hard to believe a simple game invented hundreds of years ago to pass the time has turned into a multi million pound industry, then again look at football!
