Not a lot of online bingo sites still accept players from the United States of America (USA) due to these payment restrictions.  The few trusted and respectable bingo sites that accept play from US players are listed below.

Online Bingo Sites that accept US Players

Bingo Gala ($10 Free No Deposit Bonus)

Bingo Beez ($5 Free No Deposit Bonus with promo code “SEEK4″ on Registration)

Bingo Mega

Glamour Bingo

Paramount Bingo

Premier Bingo

Main Street Bingo

So if you are based in the United States and want to play bingo online, all you have to do is visit one of the above bingo sites.

• Eight per cent of the population play bingo – 10% of all women and 5% of all men.
• An average British game of bingo takes between four and four and a half minutes.
• The average speed of a British bingo caller is 23 numbers per minute.
• The average time to check a winning claim is 30 seconds.
• There is a “caller of the year competition” in which bingo callers compete for a two week holiday.
• The French were the first to play with Bingo playing cards, tokens and reading those numbers out loud!
• Celebrities love bingo! Denise Van Outen is a big bingo fan, as are Catherine Zeta Jones and Robbie Williams.
• Bingo became popular in Australia early in the 20th Century. It was known as Housie. Housie was held in large marquees before they moved into halls.
• In the 1800’s a Lotto game similar to Bingo was used as an educational tool in Germany designed to teach children multiplication tables.
• Throughout the 1800s Bingo spread quickly in Europe. Typically, the ‘Caller’ would draw from a bag full of wooden chips numbered from 1-90. Like today, the object of the game was to be the first to cover a horizontal or vertical row.
• In 1929, a game called ‘Beano’ was played in a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. Dried beans, a rubber stamp and a cardboard sheet were all that these Americans need to get their minds off the sting of the Depression.
• The most common reasons for playing bingo are because it’s fun, it offers companionship and the chance to socialise.
• It wasn’t until a New York toy salesman named Edwin Lowe, observed how players shouted the word, ‘Beano’ after winning was the modern game of Bingo born.
• Mr. Lowe introduced the game to his friends in New York where one of them mistakenly yelled ‘Bingo’ for the first time in her excitement, and ‘Lowe’s Bingo’ was soon the talk of NYC. Lowe asked players to pay him $1 per year to allow them to call their games Bingo as well…
• By the late 1940s, Bingo games sprung up all over the country with thousands of games being played every week.

In the United Kingdom and Australia bingo cards have three rows and nine columns. Five squares in each row contain numbers ranging from 1 to 90 and the rest are blank. The numbers are usually called quickly, so players rarely play more than one book (six cards). A bingo book (a set of six cards) contains all the numbers from 1 to 90, fifteen numbers on each card, five numbers in each row. The first column contains single numbers, the second tens, the third twenties, and so on. Number 90 is placed in the ninth column along with the eighties.

Each card has a unique serial number to permit quick verification by computer.

Calculating the total number of possible combinations yeilds the result that there exists 552,446,4557,061,129,000,000,000,000 possible BINGO cards, 4,976,640,000 of which would have the same twenty four numbers, but in a different arrangement.

If we presume that there are six billion people in the world today, that means that there are 92,0557,412,343,521,400 cards for each and every person in the world.

If you could print a million cards per second, it would take 17,505,972,382,599.7 years to print every possible BINGO card,

Blackout – (Also, Coverall) A pattern where you must cover the whole card to win. Usually 50 to 60 of the 75 bingo numbers have to be called to cover all the numbers on a card. But blackouts in as few as 43 numbers have been recorded.

Bingo Board – A display board, usually electronic that lights up showing each number as it is called.

Bingo Card – A card containing 24 numbered spaces and one free space (blank), with which you play BINGO. The numbers are assigned at random on each card and are arranged in five columns of five numbers each by five rows (5 x 5 = 25 in total including the blank square). The numbers in the B column are between 1 and 15, in the I column between 16 and 30, in the N column (containing four numbers and the free space) between 31 and 45, in the G column between 46 and 60, and in the O column between 61 and 75. Players have thousands of unique (unduplicated) cards to choose from. Some manufacturers print unduplicated series of 6,000 cards. There are also series of 9,000 cards available. Hard cards and Flimsy cards have a series number printed on them. For example, card number 1252 will always have the same numbers in the same spaces.

Blower – A forced-air device that mixes the bingo balls and dispenses them to the caller who announces the number and displays it on a bingo board.

Bonanza Bingo – A progressive coverall Jackpot that is usually played as the 13th game of the session. Forty-five numbers are drawn before the session and players mark them on separate cards and set aside. There is an additional fee to play this game, usually $1. The countdown begins at 48 numbers or less and go up one number per week to 52 numbers or until won. The amount of the jackpot is determined by card sales for that game.

Buy-in – Buying bingo cards or an Admission Packet (see above). Converting cash into bingo cards.

Caller – The person who calls out the bingo numbers.

Chat Room – A handy monitor or screen where you can read and exchange messages with other players.

Consolation Prize – The prize or prizes offered on some special games if there is no winner in a predetermined number of calls.

Coverall - (Also Blackout) A pattern where you must cover the whole card to win.

Dauber – Bingo dauber is ink-filled bottle/pen with a foam tip on it used to mark called numbers. When you touch the bingo card with the foam tip it marks the square.

Early Bird Game – A bingo game that starts earlier than another regularly scheduled game.

Flimsy, Flimsies – Bingo cards printed on thin sheets of paper. There are usually three cards printed on a single sheet but flimsies are also printed in one, two, four, six or 9-card formats.

Although these numbers are amusing and each has its own story, most professional bingo halls do not use them.

There are traditional calls for the numbers. For example:

1 – Kelly’s Eye
5 – Man Alive
7 – Lucky for Some
8 – One Fat Lady
9 – Doctor’s Orders
10 – (current PM)’s Den
11 – (Chicken) Legs
13 – Unlucky for Some
16 – Sweet Sixteen
21 – Key of the Door
22 – Two Little Ducks
23 – Thee and Me
30 – Dirty Gertie
37 – More Than Eleven
45 – Halfway There
51 – Tweak of the Thumb
55 – Speed Limit
59 – Brighton Line
64 – Red Raw
66 – Clickety-Click
71 – Bang on the Drum
76 – Trombones
79 – One More Time
81 – Stop and Run
86 – Between the Sticks
88 – Two Fat Ladies
90 – Top of the Shop

Bingo is a game of chance where randomly-selected numbers are drawn and players match those numbers to those printed on cards.

The first person to have a card where the drawn numbers form a specified pattern is the winner and calls out “Bingo!” to alert others to the win.

Description of the game
Each bingo player is given a bingo card marked with a grid containing a unique combination of numbers and, in some countries, blank spaces. The winning pattern to be formed on the card is announced. On each turn, a non-player known as the caller randomly selects a numbered ball from a container and announces the number to all the players. The ball is then set aside so that it cannot be chosen again.

Each player searches their card for the called number, and if found, marks it. The element of skill in the game is the ability to search one’s card for the called number in the short time before the next number is called.
The caller continues to select and announce numbers until the first player forms the agreed pattern (one line, two lines, full house) on their card and shouts out the name of the pattern or bingo. One of the most common patterns, called house in the United Kingdom and Australia and full card, blackout or cover-all in Canada and the United States, simply consists of marking all the numbers on the card.

Other common Canadian and American patterns are single line, two lines, centre cross, L, Y, inner square (4 × 4), roving square (3 × 3), and roving kite (a 3 × 3 diamond). On Canadian and American cards lines can be made horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Inner and roving squares and kites must be completely filled; roving squares and kites may be made anywhere on the card.

The true origin of bingo dates back as far as the mid 16th century and is connected, strangely enough to the unification of Italy in 1530. This unification saw the introduction of a National lottery system, known as “Lo Giuoco del Lotto d’Italia” held each week. Interestingly, this lottery is today a major source of income to the government, contributing over 75 million dollars each year to the budget.

It was the French who developed a passion for “Le Lotto”, as it became known and they adapted their own version of the game that strikes a strong resemblance with today’s version of bingo. Three horizontal and nine vertical rows formed the basis of the card and players would cover their numbers as they were drawn until an entire horizontal row was covered – hence the winner.

Lotto continued to flourish throughout Europe. It was used as an educational tool in Germany to teach children their multiplication tables and even formed the basis of many other games and toys still noticeable in toy stores today. But where and when did Lotto somehow morph into Bingo? Well, the answer lies in what could be described as a compromise – Beano!

Picture the scene. It’s 1929 and a weary and stressed toy salesman by the name of Edwin S. Lowe is driving to Jacksonville, Georgia to prepare for some appointments. Soon after starting his own toy company a year earlier, the market crashed and Mr. Lowe’s prospects were looking very bleak indeed.

Before arriving in Jacksonville, Lowe decided to cheer himself up by stopping off at a country carnival, being a night early for his appointments. Only one carnival booth was open and very crowded. The excitement seemed to be generated by a game that was a variation of Lotto, known as Beano. A horseshoe table was covered with numbered cards and beans. Every time a pitchman pulled a wooden disk from an old cigar box and called the number on it, the players reached for a bean and covered the corresponding number on their card, if they had it. When they had totally covered a line, either diagonally, vertically or horizontally, they had to shout Beano! They then received a doll.

Lowe wanted to play, but the game was too popular and no seats were available. What he did notice though was that all the players seemed to be addicted to the game. The pitchman was not able to close and had to eventually chase the players away at 3:00am. The pitchman had apparently picked the game of Lotto in Germany and decided to adapt and bring it to the United States and to rename it Beano. The success of the game on the carnival circuit proved to be highly lucrative.

Back in New York, Lowe invited some friends to his apartment and introduced them to the game. The tension seemed palpable. One time, a player became close to winning and was getting more and more excited. When her final number was called she jumped up in a fit of ecstasy and in all her excitement got herself tongue-tied. Instead of shouting Beano she spat out “Bingo!” Lowe would later describe the “sense of elation” he experienced when he heard her cry. He knew from that moment he was going to introduce this game to the public and name it “Bingo”.

What a success it proved to be for Lowe and his company! As the game came out of the public domain it was hard for it to be trademarked. Entreponeurs emerged from all sides and began their own versions. Lowe graciously asked them to pay just one dollar a year and call their games “Bingo” as well. To avoid litigation, this seemed a small price to pay and hence the massive spread and popular interest in bingo.

Lowe became aware of the fundraising possibilities of bingo after he was approached by a parishioner who wanted to use the game to raise funds. However, there seemed to be a problem when he discovered that each game tended to produce at least a half a dozen winners. Lowe knew that in order for bingo to succeed and a larger scale he needed to develop a greater number of combinations for his cards. So he approached a mathematics professor at Columbia University by the name of Carl Leffler. Lowe wanted 6,000 new cards with different combinations. The professor agreed. What he may not have conceptualized was how much harder each card became to develop than the card before. The fee per card rose to $100 and the task was finally completed, much to Lowe’s delight and at a cost to the professor of his sanity! (Or so many people have speculated).

After that, bingo really began to take off. People started to approach Lowe in droves, asking him to help them develop bingo games. Newsletters and even a book were published. The stakes and prizes got higher and pretty soon bingo took its place in popular American culture along with sports and other forms of gambling and general entertainment.