tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-272360292010-04-30T14:15:29.313ZKeep up to date with news and stories from the UK Bingo world and find out what new guides, reviews and stories have been added to the site.Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.comBlogger408125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-80143542861341009932010-04-30T13:37:00.005Z2010-04-30T14:15:29.320Z

Today marks a sad day for me here at Playing Bingo, and the end of an era. This will be the last news post I can make via my favourite old blogging platform Blogger.com. They foolishly decided to remove the ability for users like me to publish our blogs to our own self-hosted websites. So, from now on there's no more here from blogger.But fear not, as one era ends, another dawns, and coming soon

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-46396596889895277322010-04-12T14:55:00.002Z2010-04-12T16:21:01.711Z

After a long break, Ian Grundy has returned with another fascinating insight into a grand old bingo hall, illustrated with Ian's wonderful photographs. This latest piece looks at the development of the monstrously huge Kinston-Upon-Thames Gala Bingo hall. The hall started out as a church and was a theatre / cinema for a time before being first a Coral Bingo Club and then bought for Gala. How long

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-88732754946938577492010-04-12T13:44:00.003Z2010-04-12T14:04:58.926Z

Yes, you read that right - coverage from last year's event, now live on the site. Ok, I know this should have been up about 10 months ago, but it's been a busy 10 months and I've only just gotten around to finishing. I thought I'd better get it up ahead of the 5th Annual Online Bingo Summit which is in June. If nothing else, it will serve as a taster of what to expect should you decide to go the

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-37251831653691937182010-03-03T10:08:00.002Z2010-03-03T10:16:35.443Z

Keeping things Online Bingo Summit related, Bullet Business sent over this interview with Bob McCulloch, the CEO of the recently purchased Virtue Fusion, for my money one of the top 3 bingo solutions out there. He talks about the growth in the market, the future of the industry and what makes the event so important. With the online bingo industry set to yield nearly $2 billion by 2012 the future

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-45816635444503008432010-03-02T21:17:00.004Z2010-03-02T23:21:08.688Z

You'll have to excuse the lack of action around these parts recently, there's a couple of big things happening at the moment that are affecting my ability to post here. First up, Blogger dropped a bombshell that they would no longer be supporting FTP publishing to external sites from the end of March. As the blog section of this site relies on it, it means I can no longer publish from Blogger to

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-26435443844241764552010-02-16T09:03:00.003Z2010-02-16T09:23:11.863Z

Online bingo has been rife with takeovers and buyouts recently, and this latest one sees one of the best online bingo providers bought by a wider gaming operator who's bingo offering is far from satisfactory. Virtue Fusion have in the last couple of years become one of my favourite bingo platforms, powering some of the countries biggest bingo brands (Mecca, Ladbrokes and William Hill Bingo to

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-13000113900352542492010-02-03T23:50:00.005Z2010-02-04T00:09:48.788Z

The evening of Friday the 29th January saw the 2nd Bingoport.co.uk Player's Choice Awards, held during the 2010 London Affiliate Conference. I was able to attend last year's event, but due to the pending birth of our 2nd child, I had to miss this event. But fear not, I sent along my colleague to follow the evening and report back on the awards.By all accounts the evening was another gleaming

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-41281055926200957852010-01-29T12:11:00.006Z2010-01-29T12:55:36.020Z

If you've read our scholarly and in-depth article on the early history of Bingo in the UK, like myself you were no doubt surprised to learn that bingo was played by British troops in the trenches of World War I. The game proved and excellent morale booster and social event for the entrenched soldiers, despite concerns about game fixing and unfairness.Roll time forward almost a 100 years to the

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-60630908936519731192010-01-07T23:42:00.004Z2010-01-08T00:19:38.404Z

If you've not spotted it already, there's some potentially massive news from the Government today, that could literally change the look of online bingo in the near future. The Minister for Culture, Media and Sport Gerry Sutcliffe today released a statement about his plans to undertake a review of the current licensing system for remote gaming regulation. Back in April 2009 he announced a review

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-79606466505215207382009-12-28T16:18:00.005Z2009-12-28T23:10:58.317Z

In other news, there's been a few major stories to do with bingo company takeovers and sales. First up, and a major pointer towards the consolidation taking place in the online bingo market is the yet to be finalised sale of the standalone Cassava powered site Wink Bingo, which was snapped up by the 888 Bingo network for a staggering £60million. The sale has to go through some finalisation and

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-7323808474072778482009-12-28T15:32:00.007Z2009-12-28T16:22:04.653Z

You may have spotted a pretty minor news article t'other day about a local councillor in Sudbury, Suffolk who's been banned from using some of the saucier bingo calls at local council bingo nights. His bosses thought that sayings like 'two fat ladies' for 88 or 'legs eleven' for 11 could be taken as offensive, leading to complaints, and as a pre-emptive measure asked him to stop using them, to

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-69502804633225154802009-12-16T13:21:00.002Z2009-12-16T16:38:23.528Z

If you follow the bingo news then you can't help but have noticed a couple of stories the last week revolving around taxation and the bingo industry. With last week's pre-budget report, the industry had hoped to see the Chancellor reduce his prior rise on the bingo tax which shot up to 22% from 15%. There was a slim slither of hope and action from the Chancellor, he dropped it from 22% to 20%,

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-54617659512760982492009-11-06T10:51:00.002Z2009-11-06T11:05:50.725Z

Well, after two and a half years, our resident Bingo Caller Of The Year Brett Hyrjak has written his last piece for the site. And if I say so myself, what a great piece it is! Full of pictures of Brett's adventures over the past couple of years writing at the site, and boy has it been a fun ride.As Brett mentions in his piece, a lot has changed in the world of retail bingo since he first started

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-76350438749235291012009-11-05T12:48:00.009Z2009-11-06T10:40:22.572Z

First up today, congratulations to the 25 bingo players / Gala staff members that engaged in a game of bingo on the slopes of Everest last week. The event was more than a year in the planning, and arranged to raise money for Gala Coral's nominated charity, Sue Ryder Care. It was a pretty momentous event, here's a bit of detail on it from Gala.25 dedicated bingo buffs last week climbed to an

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-30594160801948426172009-11-02T12:42:00.003Z2009-11-02T13:03:10.642Z

Prior to their relaunch last month, Sky Bingo ushered in the news with great secrecy around one of their headline new features. At the time all was hush-hush from the company, as they feared rivals would take the opportunity to trump them and their market leading offer. Their new innovation was the birth of the low ticket price guaranteed jackpot game. Players at Sky Bingo will are able to enter

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-1016510486061678322009-10-30T14:57:00.003Z2009-10-30T15:46:50.711Z

Oh my goodness, well, following on from yesterdays mention of Fives 'Free Bingo Show', I took the opportunity to try the game out. I signed up for the game at the site and claimed tickets for today's game. Low and behold I was pleasantly surprised to find I'd won a fiver on today's show. Now, there are two options - get sent a cheque (hardly worth it for £5) or double up to £10 at the Five Bingo

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-89898381508111149472009-10-29T21:20:00.004Z2009-10-30T14:18:19.019Z

Out of the ashes of the well loved but poorly thought out ITV Bingo Night Live comes Channel Five's The Free Bingo Show. There's been a few major changes, but essentially, the format and even the provider of the online element remains the same as its previous incarnation. PartyBingo are already running Five Bingo (let's hope they're doing a better job than they managed with ITV Bingo) and

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-6447982765261972712009-10-14T18:35:00.004Z2009-10-14T19:17:48.982Z

It's been a long time since I heard anything about the case of Jean McCullagh and the disputed million pound Mecca Millionaire prize that was won back in October 2007. The problems arose as she was playing with 3 other family members and had denied she had agreed to split the prize money. They said they had agreed to split any winnings, she said she'd not agreed to split the big prize. A judge

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-87433971192252302952009-10-11T08:53:00.007Z2009-10-11T09:10:00.361Z

Puerile humour warning. I was looking at the forum earlier, when the new advert from Bet365 Bingo caught my attention, for the wrong reasons. I caught the advert half way through its loop, and was amused by what I saw. It would seem that Bet365 Bingo's new offer of £25 free for £5 deposit has had a more beneficial effect than any of those pills I get offered on a daily basis by the spam emails

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-41475297747698714422009-10-10T13:10:00.005Z2009-10-10T21:25:19.672Z

Imagine if you will this. You're off to Tesco to get your weekly shop. For a change of scenery you go to the branch on the other side of town. You get there, fill your trolley with shopping then get to the checkout. The cashier looks at you sternly and says "sorry governor, I'm afraid I can't let you take all these buy one get one free offers."You look at him aghast, you just spent your time

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-30909577890576995052009-10-08T13:57:00.003Z2009-10-08T14:20:20.634Z

One of the highlights of the 4th Online Bingo Summit for me was the talk given by Angus Nisbit of Mecca Bingo, in which he spoke about Mecca's growing ability to promote between their online and retail arms. During the talk he gave a glowing insight into the success of the new concept club Mecca Beeston, and how it had exceeded expectations and was continuing to do so.There's news from the Press

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-85224621488165733392009-09-28T12:35:00.004Z2009-09-28T13:34:48.991Z

It's not all doom and gloom in the retail world. Beacon Entertainments are showing their commitment to bingo by rebranding themselves alongside adding a number of improvements to their halls. During the rebrand, the company will improve its existing Beacon clubs and re-name 3 others to expand the Beacon name. The group's Riva Clubs at Brighton and Streatham and the Hippodrome Club in Lowestoft

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-65535119911605372642009-09-28T11:04:00.003Z2009-09-28T12:31:40.738Z

Well, it's been a long hard Summer for me, with my adventures taking me away from bingo and in to completely new areas. As a result, things have been on the quiet side around here, but now I'm getting back to it and catching up with it all. I actually took time out of my usual web based job to work on the production of a feature film, which we shot back at the end of June, beginning of July.The

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-48125556639318129862009-06-17T09:36:00.002Z2009-06-17T09:45:11.018Z

We're on to the second day of the Online Bingo Summit, following the awards ceremony last night which saw Cashcade scoop a bucket load of prizes. The awards were decided by people voting during the day. This time the company bias was removed as there was only one voting card allowed per company. The results we're pretty predictable, and pretty much tallied with my expectations. Here's the results

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27236029.post-89596670359376093382009-06-15T11:28:00.004Z2009-06-15T11:56:53.803Z

I'm on the train at the moment on the way to the 4th Annual Online Bingo Summit in London. Just browsing through the news and there's a couple of interesting stories worthy of note. First up is the news that the sale of Cashcade could be literally days away. EGaming Review has a piece that says PartyGaming is close to closing the deal.I really hope PartyGaming don't make a fudge of the great work

Dio Bachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16617561451901472333noreply@blogger.com0