I've been playing and talking about bingo for a while now, but even with years of experience, you can still learn something new. That's what this episode covers: letting you know about a pull tab feature recently brought to my attention. It's also a little refresher course on some of the basics of bingo. Because it's never too late to learn.
[00:00:08] Hello, and welcome to The Broke Bingo Addict. This is a podcast that ventures through the wild and crazy world of bingo. This is much more than your grandmother's bingo. My name's Shari Flaugher, and welcome to this week's episode, which as always is for entertainment purposes only. Welcome to this week's episode of The Broke Bingo Addict. You know, I've been playing bingo for quite some time now, especially since I retired about six years ago.
[00:00:37] I play at least two times a week, if not three or four times a week. And over these years, you seem to get an attitude. You feel like you know it, like you're a professional and you've done this and you can go anywhere and do anything. And you just kind of have a basic feeling that you understand what you're doing. But I recently found out that it is never too late to learn something. So, recently, I was on TikTok, and I follow somebody named Tanya, who I adore.
[00:01:07] And her TikTok name is Bingo Addict. And I was looking on there because a lot of times she posts questions or does quizzes or just different things that are pretty interesting. And one of the things she was talking about was something called SEALS, S-E-A-L-S, SEALS. And honestly, I'd never heard of it before in my life, so I didn't know what she was talking about. So, I asked the question and she was kind enough to explain it further. So, Texas, if you haven't been there, Texas is huge on the horse races.
[00:01:36] I think I've mentioned this a few times. They love to play the tabs, the pool tabs or flash, whatever you want to call it, that are based on horse races. And what horse races are, if you're not aware, is when you have to get all the numbers in a column. So, for the basic bingo board in the United States, it goes from 1 through 75. And you have a row of 15 columns with five numbers in each column.
[00:02:02] I think 1 is like, what, 1, 16, 31, 46, and 61? I think that's all the numbers that go down in the row. So, basically, when you do these horse races, you have to hopefully, out of all the people in this room, hopefully at least get one of those 15 numbers. And then what happens is when they're going to do it, they start doing the numbers.
[00:02:26] And whoever gets the first full line of numbers, then that's the person who's won the horse race. Okay, they're very popular, and I get it. They're a lot of fun if you're lucky enough to get one of those 15 numbers. Sometimes you have to get two horses. But regardless, that's what it is. It's called a downline. And Tanya mentioned this thing about the seals. And what that is, is instead of doing the race where they're actually calling all the numbers, you know, they're popping up in your lovely little bingo board,
[00:02:55] they just open this card that comes along with the tabs, and it tells you who the winner is. I was like, what? I mean, that just seems incredibly anticlimactic. And it's like, why? Why would you do that? So people get it. They get the 1 through 15 or whatever. And then the bingo caller or whoever just opens it up and says horse number 12 won the race. And I just couldn't imagine doing that. It just seems like it just takes away a lot of the fun of hoping. Because I've seen it the other day.
[00:03:24] I was actually at bingo. And out of the 15 rows of numbers, they had called several numbers. There were like at least three or four rows that were on, meaning there were at least three or four rows where somebody only needed one more number to win. And while I was watching that, my friend had the row 12. Okay. She had the number 12. So she wanted the 12 row to win.
[00:03:47] But the 12 row at that time didn't have a single number, not one single number. But in the time span it took for somebody to win, you know, for somebody to get all five numbers, her horse had actually gotten up to four. So she was in the game. It had gone from zero to at least four out of five numbers in no time. So that's why I like watching the horse races play out because you don't know how the numbers are going to pop out.
[00:04:14] I've actually seen people who were like only one or two numbers. Actually, that's happened to me one time when I only had a couple of numbers. And then all of a sudden I got all of the numbers and won the horse race. So for me personally, that's why I don't like the seal. It seems like anticlimactic and it really takes away from the reality of who actually won that race, physically won that race. So long story short, though, what I really took away from this is that in all the times I've been playing, and trust me, I've played in Texas too, I'd never heard of that.
[00:04:43] And it just reminded me that, you know, there's so much going on in bingo that you really have to keep up to know all the ins and outs of things. You know, from one part of the country to another, things are different. And in addition to this situation with learning about seals, I had just gone up to Portland, Oregon to visit my sister a couple of weeks ago. And while we were up there, of course, of course I had to go play bingo.
[00:05:09] So luckily there was a place, I think I mentioned it in the other podcast, called Dave, D-A-V, bingo. And we went up there and we played that. And what was interesting is my sister and I went and they play on computer primarily. Again, not a big fan of the computer, particularly this type of computer, because you have to do that thing where you keep touching. Every time they call a ball, every time they call a number, you have to touch the screen to make it advance. And not a fan of that at all. The good thing was you could also play on paper, which is what we did. We did computer and we did paper.
[00:05:38] And what was really good is that they also had a sheet. And the sheet tells you what the games are that they're going to play. We're all used to that when you go to a bingo hauling. You need to know what the schedule is, what game's playing next, and so on. So they gave us that. I got a quick tutorial from the guy who was selling the packs, gave us some basic information. But again, I thought I knew everything. So when it said the games were played, I think they had like, I don't know, like 10 or 15 games. And the games were called regular bingo. All right? That's all it said was regular bingo.
[00:06:08] So for me, regular bingo just means a line. It means a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line. That's all regular bingo is. But unfortunately, I found out after like two or three games in, when I noticed when they're calling bingo, I looked up on the screen to see the patterns that people had. For them, regular bingo was a combination of a variety of things. Regular bingo could be the line that I just mentioned. Regular bingo could be inside or outside corners.
[00:06:37] Regular bingo could be, you know, the four outside corners of the free stamp. Or it could be the inside corners of the free stamp. You know, above, below, and then right and left of the center. So I learned that real quickly. And I, well, I should have learned a little quicker. But again, this is something different. I would never have called something regular bingo. That was anything other than just a line. So that being said, there are just a couple of other things that I want to mention to people
[00:07:05] who may not be aware of or just to kind of recap. You know, when I first started doing these podcasts, some of the early episodes did talk about some of the things to look out for, some of the things to know when you're playing bingo. And I think the most important thing, obviously, are to know some of the patterns. Okay. So to start off, again, Southern California. I can't speak for anybody else. Oh, I will kind of throw in maybe Northern California and Las Vegas as well.
[00:07:33] But in this general region, the most common types of bingos that you can have are these particular patterns. The first one, again, would obviously be your regular bingo. That's called a line. So whether it's horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, that's a line. And that's your most common type of bingo. But then you also have something, you have six packs, right? So you can have a six pack. It usually doesn't matter whether it's including the free spot or not. If it is, then that's a hard way.
[00:08:02] So they will tell you whether it's a hard way or an easy way. Easy way means that you can use the free spot. Hard way means that you cannot use the free spot. And if they don't specify, then it means it doesn't matter whether you use the free spot or you don't use the free spot. Okay. Then they also have a nine pack. A lot of places have it where they initially start off and they play the six pack and then they'll go on and then they'll play the nine pack. So it's kind of a progressive situation. Not always.
[00:08:28] Sometimes they're individual, but a lot of times you will see it where it's a progressive. Okay. And the same situation. A nine pack can be with or without the free space. If it's specific, they will actually say that it's specific. Okay. So you need to watch out for that. Then there's the corner stamp. Now a corner stamp literally means it has to be the four numbers, a block of four numbers in the corner. It doesn't matter which corner it is, but it has to be in the corner. A lot of other places they'll have a stamp and it doesn't matter.
[00:08:57] They'll just say a stamp or a block of four, but they'll indicate whether or not it has to be in the corner. But typically speaking, in most places, a corner stamp, as it said, I guess that was self-explanatory, has to be in the corner. Now, the other thing is I've already mentioned is in an outside corner. So those are the basic kind of games that you're going to say. And I think there are also some combinations that are pretty common out there. Again, and certainly in this region, something called crazy bingo.
[00:09:26] Now, crazy bingo, when you're playing, sometimes they'll say like, you need to have four cards of crazy bingo. And that means that you can have any one of those combinations. You can have an inside or outside corner. You can have a corner stamp. You can have a six-pack or you can have a line. That's generally speaking what the options are for a crazy bingo. Now, the other thing you have that's popular, you have something called a jamboree. All right?
[00:09:51] Jamboree is usually one of these three combinations, either a six-pack, corner stamp, or a line. So you can have any one of those on however many squares they're saying that you have to have it. Sometimes they don't say it at all. I play over at this location on Wednesdays. And sometimes they just want a single six-pack, which seems kind of easy to do, even though not as easy as you would think. But they don't ask for like three cards of a six-pack or, you know, something weird with it. It's just basically a six-pack.
[00:10:21] Another thing that doesn't fall in the category of a crazy bingo or in the category of a jamboree is a small crazy kite. All right? So what a small crazy kite is, you're going to have a block of four in a corner. It doesn't matter which corner. It could be right, left, top, bottom, whatever. And then you're going to have like a little tail going through the free square. Okay? So that's a crazy kite. And again, that doesn't fall into any of the other categories.
[00:10:49] And these are pretty much the basic types of calling you're going to get called for bingo. If you go to most places, these are pretty common. But there are a lot of other variations too. And you got to be careful about that when you're going to places. One of the places I've been playing at lately is the Samoan bingo. And it's fun, but they like to get complicated. They like to have all kind of weird things. Okay? So let me see some of the things they have. Oh, here's one that a few people have actually been doing. And this is called three in the corner.
[00:11:19] All right? So this is to have four numbers in the corner. But you don't need to have all four. You just need to have three. Now, sometimes there are places that make you do it on one square. There are places that make you do it where you just have to have it on one of each of the cards that you have. There's some that make you do it where it has to be the outside three numbers. There's some where it doesn't make any difference at all as long as it's three in the corner and everything. So I've seen that one be really kind of confusing.
[00:11:48] This other place used to do this thing where they liked you to have like a little letter T, right? It wasn't a big T throughout the page. It was a little letter T. And when you've got a lot of numbers going, it's really hard to see. So basically it was three numbers down and three numbers across connected. So it would make like a little T. So that was very confusing, especially if you've got a lot of cards going. It's hard to see that. Many times, well, they'll do a combination of something, okay? So it's like you need to have a line and four corners, okay?
[00:12:18] So either you have to have a line and four corners or you have to have a six pack and a line or you have to have outside corners and a six pack or just a lot of combinations and things like that. You need to be aware of and pay attention to. One thing I noticed one time, there was a place that actually said you could have a line and corners. But they didn't specify. It just said a line and corners. And somebody I know, one, they had a line and they had the inside corners.
[00:12:47] And they said, no, it had to be outside. So you have to be careful about that too. People really need to specify. And if you're not sure about something, then you should ask the question. I know I played the bingo club and there's a particular game where they sit there and say you need to have a double bingo on like three cards. Well, at least they're kind enough to put in the line. It has to be straights only. There are a lot of other places that do that too where they specify it has to be lines only.
[00:13:12] Because a lot of people, like the place up in Portland, consider outside corners or inside corners to also be a bingo. So it's nice when they specify that. So you need to pay attention. So what I'm trying to get at is there are multiple, multiple variations of games that can be played when you're playing bingo. So if you're going someplace and you're not really familiar with that place, it behooves you. It behooves you to get there early.
[00:13:40] And if nothing else, they should absolutely have a piece of paper that prints out exactly what games you're going to be playing. And if you have any kind of question at all, you should ask them what the specific patterns are. Again, it was my stupidity for just assuming when they said regular bingo up in Portland that it was just a basic line and I didn't know. So it's really good to go over every one of those.
[00:14:04] And if you're lucky, not all the places, but I do know that multiple places will have a sheet, you know, a reference that you can ask for that they'll give you that will point out and give you examples of all the different types of bingos that they allow, which is really helpful. Some of these places, you're playing for a lot of money. Some you're only playing for a couple of hundred dollars and that's fine. None of us wants to lose a couple of hundred dollars.
[00:14:27] But you certainly don't want to lose five or six hundred dollars because you had something and didn't realize you had it because you weren't aware of the particular patterns that were being allowed or being played at that location. So just a little tip out there. I'm trying to keep my mind open and make sure that I'm asking questions and making sure that I'm keeping on my toes when it comes to making sure I know what patterns are being played so I can win as much money as is possible.
[00:14:52] And again, particularly with all the things that are going on on pool tabs and strips, you know, as we all know, there have been some controversies about what's allowed and what's not allowed on some strips. So you need to be vigilant. Make sure that you're paying attention. Make sure that you understand the rules. And if you don't understand them, that you're taking a minute or two to ask a question.
[00:15:13] And by the way, for God's sake, whether you are sure or you are not sure, please yell bingo if you think you have a bingo. I cannot take these people who go bingo because they're afraid to say bingo because they're afraid that they might be wrong. I saw a lady the other night who almost lost six thousand dollars because she was afraid to yell bingo.
[00:15:40] But so many people kind of heard her whispering that it actually did stop the caller because people kept going. Is there bingo? Is there not a bingo? Because of the amount of money that would be won if that was the case. I think if it had not been that amount, if it had not been on the cash ball, I think people would have continued to just go on and call the next number. But because they knew it was such a large amount in play, people were like, was it? Was it? Was that a bingo? Was it not a bingo?
[00:16:02] And it took the time to have it figured out that that lady did, who had never played there before, her first time there, had actually won the cash ball, had actually won $6,000. But again, please, please, please, please don't worry about being embarrassed. You don't know those people. Just yell bingo as loud as you can. You won't be the first. You won't be the last who's been wrong about it. But hopefully you'll be right. OK, so that's all I wanted to say.
[00:16:32] Let's go out there and play some bingo. All right. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Broke Bingo Addict. And as always, I hope you'll come back and listen to the next one. Thank you so much. Bye.