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Sun Bingo Co Uk - Playing Bingo Review

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Bigger And Better - SunBingo.Co.Uk

Sun BingoVisit: www.sunbingo.co.uk

Site rating: 9 / 10

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First Impressions & Ease Of Sign up

The Sun's site impresses from the off, with it's uncluttered layout and photos of winning players getting pride of place, it immediately feels good. Now, when ever you say Sun Bingo I'm instantly teleported back to the my grandma's living room in the 1980s. There's a stack of paper Bingo cards from the The Sun newspaper piled up on the back of the sofa, and an air of anticipation as the paper boy arrives and the number marking begins. With fond memories to contend with, the online site had better live up to to its long heritage of bringing the game into the homes of the UK.

I hadn't realised that The Sun's online Bingo had grown so much. I remember looking at before I started this review section and not being impressed. Things have changed though, they are now the UK's biggest Bingo site, beating even the monstrous Gala Bingo. It's fair to say The Sun brand would be sufficient to attract a lot of players alone - no matter what the quality of the site, so I was intrigued to try out their offering.

The red livery is both familiar and comforting at once, but the red background is maybe a touch intense for my eyes. Other than that, it's attractive and the important bits of info are quickly accessible from the off. The Sun runs on its own platform, powered by Tombola. Coincidentally, Tombola have been working in Bingo for I think four decades, and were the ones who printed the Bingo cards that came with the paper and that my nan enjoyed playing so much.

The sign up process was simple and all the right security measures were in place when I filled in my details. This wasn't done at a padlocked page, but as the application is made via .asp, I think the security is handled in the coding of that. You don't get an email when you sign up - you can request your password if you forget it.

I'll digress a bit here, as I actually spoke to the people who built the software at the 2nd Annual Online Bingo Summit. They pointed out a few innovations that personally, I'd love to see the rest of the industry introduce. Amongst these were card purchase limitations to minimize discord with players 'maxing out' their tickets, and other games, most notably an 80 ball Party Bingo game complete with sliding doors to mark off the numbers. They also have regular link games between their Bingo rooms, of which there are 5 standard and others.

Another aspect of Sun Bingo I learnt about during the summit was their attitude to large jackpot prizes. They don't have the big jackpots like St Minver and some other networks. Instead they concentrate on small jackpots, that can easily be won. With some jackpots at other sites nigh on impossible to win with the need to call house at a ludicrously low ball number, for me these more winnable prizes make Sun Bingo much more exciting and better value for money.

Sign-Up Bonuses

Sun Bingo offers and promote a simple free £10 bonus on your first deposit of £10 - although the small print mentions a match of up to £25. It's not a big bonus, but from my experiences, the bigger the sign up bonus, the more the site offering it has to prove. Big bonuses are not necessarily the sign of a good Bingo site. The Sun's opening offer is in line with sites like Mecca and Gala and their ilk. As soon as you make your first deposit, the bonus is automatically and quickly awarded to your account.

Ease Of Use

From the off, everything you need to do at the site is simple and quickly achievable. Finding the important information is easy, and it's well laid out with a high standard of instruction. There are a number of ways to contact Sun Bingo and they have a support line you can ring should you feel the need. Depositing is simple and handled securely - and you launch the variety of Bingo you want straight from the site's homepage. Naturally I dived straight into the 90 ball version of the game.

The initial screen you get could be better laid out, but basically you pick one of the three rooms from the five different clubs. This gives you 15 chat rooms and 5 prize pools to play in. A brief total of the amount of players in each room would be good, but all the ones I tried were busy with anywhere between 150 and 450 players. I like that the chat rooms are split like that, given the amount of players, just having the one would soon get chaotic beyond belief. My understanding is that many players stay loyal to the rooms the play at, which helps to build the community spirit at the site.

When you get into the Bingo game, the layout is simple and eye-catching. Once again I found the strong red used a touch over-powering, but it's a small niggle. All the buttons you need are quickly apparent and buying tickets reveals another aspect of the site that I find appealing - the fixed price tickets. One of my bug bears at many of the sites I play at is the constant changing of ticket prices. I prefer a room with the price set for all games like it is here.

At Sun Bingo the price doesn't change (that I've seen) which makes a great way of budgeting for players who like to make their money last. Their purchasing methodology is unlike any site I've seen, and one that most other sites should consider adopting to level the chances of players. Basically, the most you can spend in one go it £2, or 4 strips. This stops the more hardcore players from maxing out their cards per game, which can give them an unfair advantage. Considering some sites allow players to buy up to 36 strips in a game, you can see how much of an advantage this maxing out can be.

Once you've bought your tickets, the game will auto play. Ticket sorting and auto dabbing are standard, and if you buy multiple tickets, you can select the strip you want the focus on. There's not a zoom feature as in many of the other software out there, but to be honest, it's not really necessary as your best tickets come out on top. The caller is clear and fun and calls the numbers in the old fashioned style with rhymes. Turning him off is nice and easy to do as well, for those who'd rather concentrate on the chat.

Another thing I like is the lack of slots and scratch games at the site. Many other Bingo sites overload the panel with other games and chances to spend money, but other than the two side games, the whole focus is Bingo. Minimum deposit and withdrawal levels are the same which is always a good thing. Everything about the software is top notch - there's very little I can fault it on.

It would be nice to have a lobby where you could choose the different game types and chat rooms from within the game window rather than having to go back to the main site and re-launch the window. I'd also like to be able to turn off the animated dabber. These are pretty minor things that don't really detract from the classy offering. Tombola should be congratulated on their software, for me it's up there with the best.

Community Spirit

The Sun's community is massive, despite there being little on the actual site to engage them other than the chat rooms. I've seen videos posted by Sun players at You Tube, and know that some rooms have arranged meet ups. The chat rooms are really busy and well managed, even with each club split into three seperate chat rooms. There's a lot of loyalty to the rooms, and obviously a lot of players know each other - some have even arranged chat room day outs.

The chat hosts are on hand and very helpful, as were many of the chat players. I have to say this was one of the most lively and fun chat rooms I've been in. The usual range of chat games are also played to keep the fun going. It would be nice to see more community features on the actual site. There is a wall of winners pictures with some copy attached, but things like profiles, blogs and a forum would be good as well.

Prize Money

As you can imagine with the fixed pricing, the prize money is fairly constant, depending on the amount of players. As an example, one room with 260+ players in had approximately £25 lines, £40 two lines and £140 full houses. Another room with 115+ players the split was approximately £11, £16 and £55. With the cost of the tickets at 50p a strip, these levels are really good value compared to some other sites.

There are jackpot prizes available as well as the typical house prizes. One feature I really like is the link games. Every half hour or so, all the rooms link up for one big game. The prize money on the game shoots up to over £700 for the full house. It's a great way of adding variety and excitement without changing the cost of the tickets. The jackpots are also a lot more achievable than on some other sites, and go a lot more often.

Security

Sign up is handled via the ASP pages rather than the actual padlocked secure pages. All funding pages are done over a padlocked page though, which is always reassuring to see. There is an extra security level as the site doesn't send you a sign up email with either your username or your password. If you lose or forget your password, you can reset it but you need to go through several pages of reset to do it! This means they have encrypted your password on this end, so in the unlikely event some one broke in to them, your password should be safe.

Overall Feel At SunBingo.Com

Well, warm memories from the 80s aside, The Sun is the real deal when it comes to online Bingo. It's a welcoming site with some great features and a real flair for the game. There are a few areas it could improve on, expanding community features into the site and some of the in game lack of lobby issues, but they really don't detract from the fun at Sun Bingo, and are more personal niggles.

I'd be happy to recommend The Sun Bingo to anyone, whether you read the paper or not. I'm sure my nan would love to try it out, and I'd be happy for her to do so and confident she would get on well with it. The challenge now for Sun Bingo is to maintain the level of service and quality of their offering as they continue to grow. Overall rating - 9/10 (Nov 5th 2007)

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Visit: www.sunbingo.com

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