Housie is a gambling game played in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, where it is called Bingo. Players mark off numbers on a ticket as they are randomly called out, in order to achieve a winning combination.
It is not to be confused with the similar American game Bingo, as the tickets and the calling are slightly different.
Trivia
- An average British game of bingo takes between four and four and a half minutes.
- The average speed of a British bingo caller is 23 numbers per minute.
- The average time to check a winning claim is 30 seconds.
- There is a UK Caller of the Year Competition in which bingo callers compete for a cash prize and the chance to call the numbers in Las Vegas, as well as to become the bingo 'ambassador' for Britain.
- The bingo industry employs over 20,000 people from callers, and change givers to cleaners and accountants.
- There are 699 licensed and operating bingo clubs in Great Britain.
- For the year 2000 the total estimated market was around 89 million admissions.
- Over 3 million people regularly play bingo in licensed clubs.
- Players are often members of more than one club.
- Players often arrive 2 hours before the game starts, to enjoy a meal or chat with friends.
- More than two in three people go to bingo for social, rather than financial reasons.
- Many celebrities like to play bingo, including Denise van Outen, Elle MacPherson, Damon Hill, Mariah Carey, Bianca and Jade Jagger.
- In 2004 more people attended bingo than football matches in both UK leagues.
- The current Bingo Caller of The Year is Karl Seth, aged 33, from the Buckingham Bingo Club in Old Trafford, Manchester.
- All bingo halls in the UK participating in the National Bingo Game must adhere to the somewhat more strict rules on calling numbers because of the overwhelmingly large prize money (sometimes up to GBP £500 thousand). This includes a double repetition of every single number, in the format, "Fifty five, both the fives, fifty five".
Sources
This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.
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