Introduction
Most articles that talk about Online Bingo almost exclusively try to goad you into getting free spins, wagering ridiculously and treat bingo as just a gateway to online gambling. With those articles, the point is not to help you win, but to help push their agenda to get you hooked on the site.
Even if you are going to be betting the wagering amount, the wagers are designed to induce pressure and make players commit bingo mistakes. This is how websites pay you little and take a lot. That way you blame the losses on the bingo and the small winnings on the site, where it should really be the other way around.
This article is here to teach new players like yourself the tools needed to play clean and keep what you win in online bingo!
Online Bingo?
Even if the five W’s and one H aren’t present in the headline, you know this question well. In fact, if you’re reading this article you must already have one or two reasons why you’re looking into Online Bingo in the first place.
Fact is, Online Bingo has exploded in popularity from its relatively humble origins on Web 1.0. The Bingo we know from real over the board bingo is present in its online form but much improved upon. Online Bingo is everything we want bingo to be: exciting, fast and convenient.
With Online Bingo, it takes a lot of play skills out of the online casino, enabling a lot of players to focus on the macro strategy and not worry about tripping on the game-skill requirements of online poker or online card games.
This has made Online Bingo a popular pick both for bored professionals earning to pass the time and for those down on their luck in real life.
Whichever you fall into, in the eyes of the gods of bingo, you’re the same, so just buckle down and listen.
We’re going to be going through two very important things you should know that will give you the best chances of winning.
Card Selection
Why pick your cards?
Let’s say you’re going to be running a marathon. If you’re any sane human being and are taking this seriously, you will want to be picking your shoes, your outfit and your diet carefully, right? Now take that analogy and bring it to the bingo table. Why would you simply settle for a card when you know that selecting carefully can potentially improve your performance?
Why do people not pick their cards then?
That is a question that still puzzles pros to this day. The fact is, a lot of online bingo players are starry-eyed from the free spins and tired from their day jobs, so they gloss over key strategic elements like this and just play along. Most beginning players think they’re just “trying it out for a while”, so they just start a match with a random card and wonder why they don’t seem to be winning.
Who is Granville?
This is where Granville comes in. Granville is the last name of a financial writer Joseph Granville. You will hear his name come up a lot when it comes to bingo strategy. He’s most famous for developing a theory that states that given a long enough time, each number in a bingo pool will come out in an even frequency.
How do I play with this in mind?
Many players use this theory and turn it into a few actionable steps.
First, they try to optimise their card selection for as even of distribution as they can on numbers that end between zero and nine.
Secondly, if they can, they’ll even keep an eye on the first digit of a number and try to balance that too.
Lastly, they will purposely pick games where people are not buying many cards, and play long games where they will get a closer-to-even distribution of numbers.
In fact, if you figure this out and play enough games using it to select your cards, you will find yourself doubly advantaged. We have already discussed how a lot of new players don’t bother to use selection to their advantage, but did you know that these people are actually worse off selecting cards?
Most people are bad at picking anyway
Pros have found that the criteria that most casual players use to select their cards run exactly opposite to Granville’s theory. This comes from a combination of cognitive biases and shows that we really cannot rely on unfounded intuition.
So, when you do this and select your cards well, you give yourself a huge boost in win percentage!
Money Strategy
Most sites will tell you that you should buy more cards to improve your win percentage you should simply buy more cards. While this sounds completely logically true, it is these simple truths that trick new players into wagering more and playing more cards than they should.
Diminishing Returns
Those of you familiar with game theory or strategy game discussion will know this terminology from back to front. The law of diminishing returns seems to turn up everywhere from games to investing and mathematics.
Let me demonstrate what I mean. Let’s assume that each card you purchase is the same price. You’re entering into a room of 99 other players with two cards each. So, for the first card you purchase, you will be putting yourself at 1/199 chances of winning, which is just over 0.5%.
Now you might think to boost this by buying more cards, so you buy in with ten more hoping to overpower the room through your betting size.
This would put you at 11 cards, which would put you at 11/210 chances of winning, which puts you at about 5.2%. Not bad, right?
Let’s take a closer look.
Well, with one card, with the money you paid per card you were getting a 0.5% chance of winning, which should tally up with however much the pot is.
With 11 cards, you are only getting 0.47% per card, and if I were to illustrate it further, with 21 cards you would be putting yourself at 0.45% per card.
This sounds like such a pedantic difference, but know that this adds up. 0.05% in 21 cards adds up to 1.05%. Now you calculate what a hundredth of the pot is and tell me if you’re willing to throw that out the window.
Conclusion
Well, that has been it. The moral of the story? Calculate and play smart, not emotionally. Stick to the plot and focus on playing good bingo. Bingo may at its core be a game of luck, but there’s a reason pros win and you don’t.
Good luck, and always play responsibly.
