To Play Bingo, which is kind of like a lottery, each player purchases one or more cards. Players can play between 3 to 25 bingo cards. Each card has 5 rows and 5 columns thus providing 25 spaces. The columns are labeled from left to right with the letters B, I, N, G, O.

The spaces in the cards are assigned values as follows

Each space in the 'B' column contains a number from 1 -25
Each space in the 'I' column contains a number from 16 -30.
Each space in the 'N' column contains a number from 31 - 45
Each space in the 'G' column contains a number from 46 - 60.
Each space in the 'O' column contains a number from 61 - 75.
There are 75 possible Bingo numbers painted on 75 balls in a large rotating bin. The announcer spins the ball, reaches in, selects a ball and announces it to the room.

Traditionally, the players check all of their cards to see if that number appears on their card. If it is, you mark it off. However, at most online Bingo halls, the computer can mark the numbers off for you while you spend time chatting and meeting new people in the Bingo chatrooms. When you have marked off all the numbers in the games particular winning pattern, you click BINGO and win. Generally, the game pauses while the card is verified. If it is indeed a winner, the game stops and a new game begins. If the card was'nt a winner, the game proceeds where it left off. Each Bingo game proceeds until someone wins.

Generally when playing online Bingo, your chances of winning depend on the number of cards in the particular game and how many cards you are playing.

Bingo Trivia: Bingo is legal in most U.S. states that prohibit other forms of gambling. It is permitted in Ireland where the profits are for charity; and it is closely regulated in the United Kingdom, where lotto halls were subjected to a tax in 1966.

More Trivia: On a Bingo card, a number can appear only once on a single card. Calculating the totoal number of possible combinations tells us there are 552,446,474,061,129,000,000,000,000 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 6 billion people in the world today, that means that there are 92,074,412,343,521,400 cards for each and every person in the world.