The National Bingo Game Association (NBGA) has just published its list of the 2015 top ten ‘luckiest’ towns in the UK which is collated by counting how many winners there were in each town over the previous year in the linked National Bingo Game. This year’s big winner is Dundee Mecca Bingo which had the highest number of winning players.
What is very interesting though is that the list for 2015 contains 4 towns or cities who were also in the 2014 top ten luckiest towns list. If you think about how many towns there are across the UK that could potentially appear on the list, then the chances of four appearing in the top ten two years in a row are very slim indeed, so, what is occurring (or recurring)?
The 4 recurrent lucky locations are Blackpool, Glasgow, Oldbury and Stockton On Tees. The luck can’t be explained by the number of clubs in any town, because when there are several clubs those numbers are averaged out, Glasgow being a good example of this where the 54 wins in the 2014 list were averaged out over the four clubs to give a figure of 14 wins (which put them in position 4). Which, if you think about it, means that really speaking the top ten should be called top ten luckiest clubs not towns, because 54 wins in one town should have put Glasgow firmly in the number one spot in the 2014 top ten list (not meaning to be pedantic, but…). The full 2014 top ten list with win figures and amounts can be seen here.
Oldbury for example is a small town with only one bingo hall, and it has managed to make the top ten twice in a row. Luck? In the 2014 top ten, three Welsh bingo halls made it to the top ten, Wrexham, Newport and Bridgend, which is quite unusual (there are not that many clubs in Wales), but would appear to support the idea that it is all random.
One or two clubs reappearing two years in a row may be explainable, but the same four? We like to think that we’re kind of smart at Playing Bingo, when it comes to bingo at least, but, we’re not rocket scientists, and none of us have gone deep into the depths of random number theory, or probability, so if any of you bingo players out there also happen to to be budding scientific geniuses, and can explain the ‘lucky?’ situation in simple terms, we’d love to hear from you (please leave a comment below).
Now I’m not suggesting anything untoward here, merely speculating as to whether there is a straightforward explanation of the recurrences, or whether I’m completely barking up the wrong tree and it is all down to luck, and nothing else. Do the ‘winning four’ play more national games than the others? Do they sell more cards than the others? Are there other factors that could be taken into account? Again, our hands go out to anyone who may be able to enlighten us on this by leaving a comment below.
By the way, a look at the top ten luckiest National Lottery winning towns does not include any on the bingo top ten. And finally, if your local bingo hall is not on the top ten list don’t worry, your time may come, because luck is as luck does! It’s all random (or is it?)!
