Do you know what the favorite leisure activity of young women, 20 to 25 years of age, in the UK? It’s 90 Ball bingo. The game is an absolute craze in the UK. Of course, if you’re from the UK, you already knew that.



Naturally, since all the young women are playing the game, you can find a lot of men, both young and old, playing the game in earnest. Online 90 Ball bingo has been an absolute phenomenon in the UK and has been growing by leaps and bounds since 2005.



With the huge popularity of online 90 Ball bingo in the UK, many Internet heavyweights such as Yahoo!, AOL UK, Virgin and MSN UK have ventured into the market and now manage their online bingo. Major British TV shows such as “Emmerdale,” “Coronation Street,” and “I’m a Celebrity” have also jumped on the online bingo bandwagon and now run their own games.



The game is called 90 Ball bingo because 90 is the maximum quantity of numbers that can be called in the game. It is played on bingo cards which have three horizontal rows and nine vertical columns.



The game begins with players buying their bingo cards where numbers are spread out across the three rows. On each row, only five of the nine spaces have numbers while four spaces are blank. The numbers range from 1 to 90. The first column has numbers from one to 10, the second column has numbers from 11 to 20, the third column has numbers from 21 to 30 and so on until the ninth column.



Once all players have their cards, the dealer begins drawing numbers at random from a container and calling these numbers out. Players mark each number called on their cards. The first player who completes each of three patterns shout out “Bingo!” to indicate that he has won the game. The dealer confirms the numbers on his card. Once the win is confirmed, a new game begins.



The three basic patterns in 90 Ball bingo are One Line, Two Line and Full House. The first player who crosses off a horizontal line wins One Line, the first to cross off two horizontal lines wins Two Lines and, finally, the player who crosses off all three lines wins Full House.



Prizes for each pattern increase in value. Naturally, the biggest prizes are awarded for Full House games because these are the most difficult.



In 90 Ball bingo, each player can have as many as 48 tickets. Players can also purchase a strip of six tickets which covers all numbers from 1 to 90. This way, he is sure to cross out one number every time a bingo call is made.