Basic small-town Bingo Strategy

You can either plug away at Bingo, night after night, or just come out in force when "specials"/"jackpots"/ "supers"/"progressive"/"pot o' gold"/etcetera full- house games go above a certain max. number for the pot. Let's say 57 #'s.

Some people would say that number is too conservative. They swell the Bingo hall with their numbers when a jackpot goes above 53 #'s (the absurdly optimistic would say that any pot over 50 #'s can't be ignored.).

The lowest full-house that I've ever heard about in the time I've been working in this
place was a full-house at 46 #'s, last fall(reported to me by the guy who trained me in). The
lowest number that I've ever given away a pot on is 50 #'s.
The lowest number that I've run across was a 42 # full house that I read about, occurring
somewhere in the SEattle, WA, area.(I'll look around and see if I can find a lower #).
I guesstimate that most full-houses go between 58 and 64 #'s. (Possible project: Keep
track of all full-house games for a week/month and make table of final called # totals. Find
average/high/low.)

Since taking up the Bingo-caller stand, I've often wondered what has been the lowest # full-card that has ever occurred in actual play. The lowest possible # full-house could theoretically be drawn from 24 straight ping-
pong balls (Bingo card: 25 squares minus the 'free' space) popping up the chute on any bingo machine, anywhere, any moment now. In actuality, the odds of such an event occurring belong to the realm of the 'astronomical'. A quick search gives me these numbers: there are 111, 007, 923, 832, 371, 000 possible 'sets' of cards, each 'set' having 4, 976, 640, 00 cards with the same 24 #'s, but in different configurations. The odds of drawing a full-house on 24 #'s suck.

Any 24 # full-house Bingo winner would, of course, fill every possible bingo pattern along the way, but if competing against other cards wouldn't necessarily win the games for those patterns (For example: The minimal draw for a two-line bingo is eight numbers, but a 'perfect' card on its way to a 24# full-house wouldn't have to fill a two-line pattern until the 16'th # is drawn. Allright, that's enough Bingo for today