Odds of winning at Mecca Bingo?

[Deleted User]

Hello!

Not strictly savings related but you guys seem the best at maths!

Bit of a weird question... Does anyone know the odds of winning a 'house' (3 full lines) at Mecca Bingo?

Saliant bits of info:

300 people people
90 ball game
11 'houses' won i.e. the booklet of game cards has 11 pages

I ask as last night was my first night and I oddly won £300 for a £10 stake!

Is it the same maths as winning the lottery?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_mathematics

So as in the above link the odds of picking 6 balls out of 49 are 1 in 13,983,816. Essentially a house is 15 balls (prepicked) out of 90 or as per Excel:

=HYPGEOMDIST(15,15,15,90)

Or 1 in 45,795,673,964,460,800

Surely this can't be true?!

Thanks

David

innovate

Google for Bingo House Edge

If you can't stop gambling, gambleaware are there to help.

Blackdog

I am not sure that you actually know how many people are playing a particular game. The screen may say 300 but in reality there is no way of knowing if this is accurate, it could be 3000. If so your win was even luckier than you thought.

tight_is_right

Nope, those odds are way off.

It's not quite right but with 300 people and you keep playing until you have a winner then you have a 1/300 chance. Sometimes two people will win at the same time, so that probably changes the odds slightly, but it will be very close to 300/1 I think. To make it easier to understand, imagine there were just 2 people playing, clearly you're going to win about 1/2 the time.

Lottery there doesn't have to be any winners, and the number of balls picked is always 6. This is why the odds are much greater.

tight_is_right

To add, with 11 games you just get 11 chances so with 300 players a time 11/300 or just over 3% of the time you visit you will win. If this is right it also suggests there are more than 300 players otherwise the bingo hall won't be making any money.

[Deleted User]

innovate wrote: »

Google for Bingo House Edge

If you can't stop gambling, gambleaware are there to help.

Hmmm - I've already googled! Don't worry I've not got a problem with gambling either! Suppose they'd all say that though right!

Blackdog wrote: »

I am not sure that you actually know how many people are playing a particular game. The screen may say 300 but in reality there is no way of knowing if this is accurate, it could be 3000. If so your win was even luckier than you thought.

As only people in the room were shouting line, 2 line, house etc. I can be sure the games I'm talking about were in this specific location not national - which were played later. So my estimate of 300 isn't far off.

tight_is_right wrote: »

To add, with 11 games you just get 11 chances so with 300 players a time 11/300 or just over 3% of the time you visit you will win. If this is right it also suggests there are more than 300 players otherwise the bingo hall won't be making any money.

11 games = 11 'house' winners = 11*300
11 games = 11 '2 line' winners = 11"20
11 games = 11 '1 line' winners = 11*10

So the bingo hall pays out £3630 but we all paid £10 or £3000 so yeah, by my estimation they're making a loss. One assumes it was maybe 400 or 500 then but I can't believe it was more than 500. I'm still not 100 hundred percent sold on the odds above but thanks!

innovate

Blackdog wrote: »

I am not sure that you actually know how many people are playing a particular game.

What's more, you have no idea how many of the 'people' are actually casino bots. So out of 300 or however many 'people' in the room, you may be the only real person. You simply do not know.

The only thing you know for sure is that these games are provided because they make a profit for the provider. Therefore, the chances of real players losing rather than winning are always higher.

See my links for bingo house edge articles.

marathon_man_3

Deleted_User wrote: »

Not strictly savings related but you guys seem the best at maths!

I don't think it is savings-related in any shape or form.

[Deleted User]

marathon_man wrote: »

I don't think it is savings-related in any shape or form.

Jesus Christ - give me a break! This is purely a bit of fun! If you don't have any helpful to add how about adding nothing at all!

somethingcorporate

I think the point was there are far more appropriate forums to discuss things like this. Like Discussion Time.

Russe11

It all depends on the % of ticket price that feeds into the prize fund, this is where the site makes its money, the odds of winning are irrelevent to them.

Somebody has to win, since the number are drawn until a winning combination has be achieved, spilt prize occur where participants get a win drawn on the same number.

The reason there are so many bingo operations online is that its the highest house edge gaming product you will come across, they is no regulation to the payout required, some sites run as low as 25% going into prizes.

These sites are making £100s of pounds a min, with vitually no liability, that how they can afford such aggresive marketing, all day long on tv. They offer bonuses in 100s of % to sign up... £10 deposit and get £50 free etc. the reality is though you are never getting £50, you just getting the choice to buy £50 worth of free tickets which the face value is far less than than.

Online bingo is very different to the land based clubs since the online version actually makes the operator a good magin, land based clubs rely on slot players and the bingo being the draw.

Bingo is ok for a bit of fun and if you must play the sites sign up offer, but then after that walk away and use another sites promotion.