Paper or Plastic

Paper vs Plastic

In many bingo halls, you can choose between playing on paper bingo cards, which you have to daub with your daubers manually or you can buy an electronic bingo machine (like a small handheld computer) and play the electronic cards in the machine.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach

PAPER BINGO CARDS

You have to daub them with ink

There is a practical limit to how many cards you can watch at a time

ELECTRONIC BINGO MACHINES

You can play many many cards - more then you could play on paper

Some machines are radio-airwave controlled - they will mark off the numbers automatically so you don't have to do anything other then wait for a bingo to call out! This eliminates mistakes from accidentally keying in wrong numbers.

The machines usually are "rented" to you for $1 or $2 dollars.

Paper vs Plastic mixed vs separated

Most casinos that offer both paper bingo and electronic machines allow you to choose. Because a electronic machine can manage and play more cards then a person daubing paper bingo cards can, the player using an electronic machine would appear to have an advantage by nature of the fact that he's playing more cards per game.

Some casinos like Fiesta Henderson only offer paper. This levels the field in that everyone has to daub ink on paper cards, which has a practical limit.

Blue vs Red and the Color of Money

Bingo cards at most locations are either color coded or "grouped" into levels that determine how much they cost, and how much they would pay on a bingo win. For example, and many casinos the BLUE pack of cards costs around $3 or $4 dollars per session and pays around $50 for a standard bingo. The next higher pack might be the RED pack which costs roughly 2X as much as the blue pack and pays about 2X as much for a bingo. Other levels like GREEN or TAN might be offered which cost more but pay more if you win.

Contrary to popular belief, not only are the cards at the next higher level more costly, they are mathematically designed to be more difficult to win! So while it would seem that if you paid $4 for a blue pack to win $50 per game and you paid $7 for a red pack to win $100 per game that the red pack would be the better deal. NOT ALWAYS TRUE! For many places, the card at the more costly levels not only cost more because they pay more but they are mathematically designed to be harder to win. How can this be? The way the numbers are distributed on those higher cost cards is more limited.