If you are not too familiar with the different formats of bingo, then here you can find out most of the basics that you will need to know.

There are in fact a large number of variants of online bingo and new ones are appearing continually. Although this might seem a little daunting at first, mostly they fall into two major bingo categories. These are known as 75 ball games and 90 ball games. You will also find 80 ball games and games with different numbers of balls, but most of these are very similar to 75 ball games.

So why do we call them ball games when really they are number games? This all stems from the original live bingo games when the numbers were selected by a machine that randomly selected, using one mechanism or another, a number of actual balls each bearing a number, something similar to today’s National Lottery.  Of course there is no longer the need to use real balls, but doing so adds something more to the spectacle than would a set of numbers appearing on a computer screen.

With all bingo games the players have bingo cards, and the aim is to complete specific patterns of numbers by marking them off when they are called. These patterns may be lines, diagonals, or specific shapes.

90-ball bingo is the traditional UK version of the game. It is played using bingo cards that are divided into three rows of 9 columns with each row having just 5 numbers. There are three wins; the player completing one line, the player completing 2 lines, and the player completing all three lines (also known as a full house). These may be different players or just one, as you can win multiple times.

75-ball bingo is the traditional US version. It uses a card with five columns and five rows and there is a number marked at every position apart from the centre which is a free space.  Here you can also win by completing rows, although columns also count, as do specific winning patterns. 

Mecca Bingo is one of the best bingo sites on the web, with some free bingo games too, and just one of the reasons for this is the large variety of different games you can play there.

Playing online bingo at Mecca Bingo is fairly intuitive, and you can also learn the game by playing for free.