Bingo Systems

Some players advocate a system of tracking numbers. To use this system, according to one expert, you need to play four cards at most for each game. You bring along to each bingo session a sheet of paper listing the numbers from 1 to 75, then check off each number as it's called, for the entire session of games. Do this for at least five sessions. (It seems to be assumed that you play in the same parlor and that the same mechanism is used for dispensing the numbers at each game.) Then, you gather your tracking sheets and count the number of times that each of the 75 numbers was called. Divide that tally by 75 to deter- mine the relative probability of each number. Then, the next time you play bingo, select your cards to take maximum advantage of the numbers that you've tracked as most likely to be drawn.

One essential point to bear in mind when a friend or a book recommends a certain mathematical system: so much depends on the type of game. The guide that advises players to focus on the "high-win" squares may give you an advantage, but only in straight bingo. That system may not do you any good if you're playing an H pattern, for instance.

Also, you may not be free to choose the game cards. In that case, of course, no mathematical system would help you win. We should add that it could be very frustrating if you have your heart set on a certain configuration of certain numbers. It's been calculated that there are 111,007,923,832,370,565 possible configurations of those twenty - four numbered squares!

All in all, whatever may be said about bingo, it remains basically a lottery.

Consider the following definition:

A lottery is any scheme for the disposal or distribution of property, by chance, among persons who have paid or promised to pay any valuable consideration for the chance of obtaining such property, or a portion of it, or for any such property upon any agreement, understanding, or expectation that it is to be distributed or disposed of by lot or chance, by whatever name the same shall be known.

A lot of legal mumbo-jumbo, but that description certainly applies to bingo: a game of chance.

(If you're curious, that passage is from the gaming laws for Nevada-where millions play bingo for money every year. Go figure!)