Online Bingo for Real Money and Free

For most people, bingo is a game usually reserved for charity functions and retirement homes. Indeed, the mention of the word evokes images of overly-excited emcees or, perhaps, an unfortunately-named dog.

However, New Jersey residents may be surprised to learn that there are several online casinos in the Garden State that offer bingo games to their players. Outside of New Jersey, people in every state but Idaho, Washington and Michigan can play online bingo at Pulsz Bingo, a social casino.

If you are interested but haven’t played bingo in many years, look no further. We will walk you through how online bingo works as well as all of your options.

Top casinos with real money online bingo

There are a few online casinos that offer bingo. In each case, the variant that you can play is 90-ball bingo, which we’ll explain later.

If you’re interested in giving online bingo a try, head to one of the following operators. The themed casino Wheel of Fortune may also be expanding across the US in the coming months, so stay tuned for updates.

Free and real money online bingo

Online bingo made its debut in New Jersey in 2015. The game quickly became the dominant form of bingo in the Garden State, accounting for more than 80% of all the games played in the state.

At present, there are a few online casinos in New Jersey that offer an online bingo game. Each site has a separate tab for bingo players, so it’s not hard to find your way there.

If you are not in New Jersey, you may be able to play bingo at sweepstakes sites like Pulsz Bingo. You can play Pulsz for free or for cash prizes.

Online bingo is a bit different in terms of its mechanics. Generally speaking, players do not buy individual cards. Instead, they buy a set of 6 cards known as a “strip.”

The nice thing about online bingo is that it’s much easier to play lots of cards than in live play. Online bingo sites automatically mark your called numbers, so there’s not much to do after you make your purchase for a game.

One of the main differences between live and online bingo is the sheer number of players that can join an online bingo game. Since there are neither physical nor mechanical issues associated with playing, it’s possible to have games with thousands of people and cards in play.

These gatherings, of course, lead to vastly increased jackpots. Even small drawings have payouts in the thousands, which dwarfs the biggest cash opportunities in most live settings.

Amazingly, you might be able to get into the game without paying anything at all. Two of New Jersey’s casinos, Tropicana and Virgin, offer free bingo games online at various points throughout the day.

These games are rarely eligible for the biggest jackpots. However, they provide an excellent opportunity for those new to online bingo to give the game a try.

Paid games on New Jersey sites range from $1 – $5 to play. They can be a cheap way to put yourself in a position for a big win. However, bear in mind that your chances of winning escalate as you buy more tickets for a game.

How 90 Ball Bingo Works

With all three online casinos offering the 90 Ball version of bingo, it’s important to understand how the variant works. Though it shares traits with the standard 75 ball game, there are some key differences in how play proceeds.

Each game card consists of 27 squares, arranged in a 3×9 (3 rows, 9 columns) grid. In each row, five squares are filled with numbers and four remain blank.

The nine columns correspond to the 9 different batches of numbers that can be called in this type of game. So, column 1 will have numbers from the 1 – 9 batch, column 2 will have numbers from the 10 – 19 batch, and so on. On any one card, no more than 3 numbers from each batch will be used.

As mentioned earlier, 90-ball cards tend to be sold in groups of 6. Each group is called a strip.

Like any bingo game, a caller will announce randomly-drawn numbers between 1 and, in this case, 90. As each number is called, players (or the app) will mark all occurrences of the number in the players’ strips.

Online bingo vs. electronic Bingo

As it turns out, New Jersey is the only state in the union with online bingo outside of sweeps casinos. Every other state either does not offer the game as part of its online gambling suite, or simply does not have online gambling itself.

Now, if you visit the sections of your state’s laws regarding bingo, you may see mention of “electronic bingo.” At first glance, you might feel excited that your state actually does offer an online version of the game.

Sadly, however, electronic bingo is not the same thing as online bingo. Instead, electronic bingo refers to computerized bingo games that live bingo halls can run in conjunction with their paper-based games. These computers are handheld, fairly clunky, and only allow you to play during the live rounds at the hall itself.

You may also see references to “instant bingo,” which might make you think that there’s an online component. However, instant bingo refers to paper-based games that are commonly known as “pull tabs.” They are small, perforated packages that you buy to participate in mini-games, which are separate from the main bingo calls.

These terms can be confusing at first glance. Make sure to read your state’s laws about bingo carefully, but for right now, New Jersey is the only place with truly online bingo.

How to read your bingo card

Of course, the obvious question is how to read your card and determine if you’ve won. After all, the whole point of the game is to call a bingo and take home the prize for that drawing.

In most 75-ball games, there is usually a single winner who cries bingo after marking all of their numbers in the prescribed pattern. While there can be multiple winners if the cries occur simultaneously, the game stops as soon as at least one valid bingo gets called.

In 90-ball, the blank spaces count as if they have already been filled. Meanwhile, players can achieve one of three winning conditions during the course of a game:

• Any line: all five numbers in a single row of a card are marked
• Any 2 lines: all five numbers in two rows of a card are marked
• Full house: all five numbers in all three rows of a card are marked

It is possible for the same player to win all three phases of a 90 ball game. Generally speaking, full house winners tend to be eligible for larger prizes.

As is the case with standard bingo, simultaneous wins will result in the division of a prize amount. However, in some ways, 90-ball is a far more forgiving variant than its 75-ball cousin.

Can I play online bingo in PA?

Nearby Pennsylvania is also a legal online casino state. So, Pennsylvanians might be wondering if they can play online bingo there.

Unfortunately, the answer is: not at this time, unless you are using a sweeps casino. Pennsylvania casinos have a wide array of gaming options that players can access through their devices, but bingo is not allowed to be one of them at this time.