Bingo Bingo Primer

Can anyone direct me to the equivalent of "Casino Bingo For Dummies?"

Here's the background - I am as deeply mathematical as my girlfriend is not mathematical. I play blackjack and video poker, in the long run I do win at blackjack. My new girlfriend likes to play Bingo; I find it uninteresting but I'm happy to take her. At first I buried my head in the sand, not wanting to burn brain cells on a game of pure luck, but I was at least vaguely aware that there must be ways to optimize your results.

As a consequence of two stackable promotions at the place I play blackjack, I can give my gf $40 a week (on average) to play Bingo, so it seems worthwhile to understand the game and the odds.

My most general question is, how do the odds vary between the exotic promotions and the mainline games? How much of the return comes from the Aceball/Cashball/whatever they call it? In blackjack, the side bets are uniformly terrible, but is this the same in bingo?

Those, and anything else we'd want to know that's non-obvious. Wizardofodds.com has odds but not really a thorough explanation of all the aspects of the game.

 

OK well lots of views so far, no responses, I'm trying to self-educate myself. Here are some further observations:

The big one is that when we get the medium electronic package (5 small rainbows and 2 blues validated) for $38 they were selling $27 worth of side games. Really, my head spins, doing this from semi-memory there are three different types of cards for the double-dab, Four Of A Kind and Bingo Bonus at $5 each but when you buy them both you get an extra small rainbow non-validated, 3 bonus X-strips, some extra progressives on the coveralls, and anytime I take a stab at calculating the odds on any of them, they seem just awful. For the Four Of A Kind I calculated roughly that the break-even was 15.2 players (i.e. you need to have one chance in 15.2 of winning any given game). At this casino, the times I've played and also other sessions I've looked inside and counted, it seems the player count is in the low 30's. I have no idea what the "normal" number of cards people buy is. I know there are some ways to back-engineer the number of players and I might play with those next time we play.

In a way, this is just absolutely the best possible thing for my relationship. At first I thought Bingo was zzzzz but she liked it and I tolerated it now and then. And then I fell into this thing where she can play Bingo for basically nothing, anything she wins is free money, and I now have a mathematical problem like those I used to solve literally when I was about 12 years old. (OMG I'm dating my babysitter!)

The person I consider my total go-to gambling authority, Michael Shackelford, says "avoid side bets at Bingo." He also says "Go when the cashball is low because there will be fewer players, and don't validate, but if you must go when the cashball is high then validate." But the electronic specials are all validated anyway.

To share a related story about side bets, when I was dealing blackjack I had this total blind spot about side-bet players can't be AP's and so I overlooked one guy because he was sometimes playing side bets, and then I realized that he was playing Lucky Ladies, which is countable. Like a kid who has just discovered that you can combine baking soda and vinegar and get a chemical reaction, I told my shift manager that I felt bad that I hadn't flagged him sooner, and that I had calculated that Lucky Ladies went postive EV at TC>4. And he gave me this vacant stare like "have you forgotten that you're just the hired help?" and said that LL was so profitable that it was fine with him if even counters bet it.

(Being in a casino, especially a small one, is a different experience when you know everything that's going on behind the scenes.)

 

Shackleford is possibly the best resource, but some things have evolved, and every situation is different. Generally I think the Vegas bingo rooms have added more bells and whistles than ever.

Side bets are almost always bad, except when they bribe you to buy them. An example is the free rainbow when activating the bonus features. It's probably a good add-on, although not necessarily on a small spend.

Dual daub game cards typically do not include a bribe component, and are only rarely playable. There's a breakeven threshold for the jackpot amount, but the variance on playing for a 5 to 6-figure jackpot is a bit much for me.

The cashball is typically not a big factor in payback. Assuming 11 or 12 eligible games, and 75 balls in the hopper, it's only going to hit once every 6 to 7 sessions. On a $1200 jackpot, that's only $200 of expected payout available in a session. Total payout for all the regular games is roughly around $3000. Cashball therefore is less than 10% of payback unless it's a big jackpot amount. Unfortunately as you note, the discounted packages require validation, and the aforementioned bonus features are only available with validation.

Afaik, Vegas bingo paybacks have really tightened up over the years. For last year 2024, Gaming Control indicates 15% hold at the 5 bingo rooms in the Boulder area, and 29% hold at the 6 bingo rooms in the Balance of Clark County area. With optimal buy-in decisions, you may be able to trim away most of the house edge, although there's also a cost of tipping on your wins.

 

In the 5 weeks since I posted that, I've learned a lot more.

Please assume in all cases that I'm just looking to maximize EV and not worried about variance. And I'm doing a lot of research, like trying to track attendance and such, but it's not like I'm spending my life living in the Bingo room.

So a few questions:
1) The 7PM session is a regular pay game for all sessions but has two $1000 coveralls at the end. It seems like a good strategy for this game would be to load up on Blue cards. If the full session payout is $3000 and $2000 of that is not color-sensitive, seems like a loophole.
2) Right now there is a $95K progressive on hitting the double-daub in 35 numbers. Positive EV right?
3) Do people ever pool up for progressives? I know some people who used to do that on slots and video poker. I'd like partners mainly because I don't want the tax hit if I win. The most you're allowed to buy is 30 cards.
4) If you see the aceball for the 3PM session went up $150 yesterday and the aceball for the 9PM session went up $250, what does that tell you? Is it reasonable to say that attendance at 9PM was 67% greater than 3PM? Assuming validation is $1 per 6 cards, about how many cards would you estimate were in play at each of 3PM and 9PM?
5) The place I play has a $5K aceball at 7PM on Thursdays, but I don't think that really moves the needle. But Aceball is a color-neutral payout, right? So it could be more lucrative for a mass-Blue purchase. The place I play has a buy-two-get-two-free on color packs. I feel like the pricing is pretty much the same everywhere except for one place that is paper-only.

Any guess on what the average number of cards per player is? I'm working on some data for that but I'm going to need WAY more data to make sense of that.

Tipping never really occurred to me. Which might be funny as a former blackjack dealer in a place where tips were about 70% of our compensation.

 

1) Yes, except you have to tangle with the specifics of the price structure. Looking at the Aceball room, their small rainbow special is deeply discounted, whereas your only option for blues is the no-val color pack special.

2) Yes, I believe so. Within 35 #s, it's 79,404 to 1. And you're only paying $1 to win $95k. Not to mention the winnings from hitting the $200 consolation pay.

3) I would not feel confident partnering with a rando. Even if the person is honest, you could run into a simple misunderstanding. Bingo players are not usually high-intellect.

4) I've done some tracking, and the numbers have not always aligned with my own observations. I have some ideas, but I don't know why. One thing to be aware of is they may not apply a consistent rate of increase. A low Aceball may increase at one rate, whereas an Aceball augmented to $5000 may increase at a slower rate. The dual daub may run more slowly above a designated jackpot threshold.

Depending on the room, I would guess around 100 cards as an overall average per player. A typical player buys one electronic special, plus an array of add-ons and extras. South Point seems to run higher.

5) I'm not very current on the offerings around town, but you have to pay careful attention to every detail. For example, I think South Point still has "club card discounts":



With a structure like that, you need to carefully engineer your purchase decision.

Wizard of Odds has a Bingo Card Estimator. You can input the numbers for each game when you play a session, but it's a blunt instrument because of variance.

 

Thanks for the reply; if you ever need blackjack help, I'm your guy.

1. I'm trying to collect data, including using the Bingo Card Estimator. FWIW, my math skills are such that I could do that myself if I had to. (I read a brief bio of Michael Shackelford and it said that he started on his path when he read "Scarne's Complete Guide To Gambling" when he was 11. What a prodigy. I don't think I read it until I was 12!) Yes, the variance means you need a lot of data. This is what actuaries do every day of our professional lives, try to make sense of thin datasets.

2. Agreed also about the structure of the color cards. My spreadsheet includes putative comparisons of the different card combinations available.

3. Would not partner with people I don't know. I've invited about 40 people I know personally, people I know would write me a check and know they'll get back what they're entitled to. I've also been tracking that double progressive jackpot and it doesn't seem to be growing much more rapidly than when it was smaller and even when it was more numbers. The other Arizona Charlie's just hit and reset to 32 numbers and people seem to be still playing it. At least when I play blackjack and the count is adverse, I drop my bet size.

4. I'm focused right now on this location because I have a fair number of points that I can use for half-price Bingo. My best friend loves blackjack and this casino is unusual by (a) having a combined point system for table games and machines and 10x points on weekends. It's one thing to say "If I spend $100 on Bingo, how can I get an EV of $90 rather than $80." It's another to say "How can I turn my free points into $450 rather than $400." But your comment about South Point is well taken. That's actually my favorite casino, although I can't play blackjack there anymore."

5. The $5K Aceball is a promotion for the 7PM session on Thursdays; if not hit, it reverts to the "normal" progression. But given the estimate of 100 cards (not far off from my own estimates) and 120 players at the 7PM session (a much more easily estimable number by just counting the people in the room), and 11 games subject to the aceball, that would make the aceball value per card equal to 11/75 * $5000 / 120000. That's only 61 cents per 100 cards, not enough to move the needle.

The last time I was there, when I bought in I didn't buy any double daub cards (the jackpot was still under the threshold) and the seller looked at me like I had just paid the cover charge at Sapphire in cash and objected when they gave me my change in $1 bills, like "Do you know where you are and what we do here?"

When I have time I'll expand my post with a more detailed calculation.

 

Thanks. It's not my favorite game, but I'll play occasionally if I find a promo, or a machine that awards full points.

Looks like the west side jackpot was hit yesterday. I think many players increase their dual daub allocation when the jackpot is high, so they're not completely insensitive to the odds.

Do I detect an extra zero in the denominator? I think it would be more like $6.10 per 100. Some of the other rooms can really be cashball-heavy. Looking today, South Point has $26k at the 1pm. Santa Fe Station has $33k at the 3pm.

Ha ha yes, they'll get used to you eventually. A decade or so ago when I played there, the dual daub game was positioned last -- after the regular coveralls. So I was able to leave early. But I was basically the only one. Maybe one or two others. Everyone else played the dual daub.

I don't much like the way Vegas bingo has evolved. Statistically they hold more than ever before, and I find there's too much jackpot emphasis now. In most cases, you can still opt out of the jackpots, but it's hard to opt out of validation. Years ago as I recall, you could commonly buy the electronic specials with or without validation. Now it's forced validation in most cases, otherwise you don't get the discount.