12 Bingo Myths Debunked: What the Math and the Records Actually Show

Bingo halls run on tradition, and tradition comes with a lot of folklore. Some of it is harmless fun. Some of it costs players money. For each myth below, our editorial team ran the numbers or checked the records, and we say plainly whether it holds up.

Myth 1: “That number is due”

False. This is the classic gambler’s fallacy. If B-7 hasn’t been called in an hour, it isn’t any more likely to come up next. Bingo balls have no memory, and a random number generator has none either.

At any point in a game, every ball still in the machine has the same chance. With 50 balls left, each has a 1 in 50 chance of being the next call, including the one you’ve been waiting for.

Myth 2: “Some numbers are hot and some are cold”

False. Over a session you’ll notice some numbers coming up again and again. That’s what randomness looks like in small samples. Streaks happen, but they don’t continue in any predictable way. Tracking “hot” numbers to pick cards won’t change your odds.

Myth 3: “Pick cards with numbers near 38 for long games”

False. This is Tippett’s theory. It’s true that the average of called numbers drifts toward 38 as a game goes on, but that doesn’t make middle numbers more likely to be drawn. In our one-million-draw test, middle and extreme numbers performed the same within random noise. Full details are in our Tippett’s strategy guide.

Myth 4: “Balanced cards win more”

False. Joseph Granville’s 1977 system says to choose cards with an even mix of odd/even, high/low and final digits. The draw does balance out over time, but no specific card benefits from that. See our Granville’s strategy guide.

Myth 5: “Some cards, seats or daubers are lucky”

False. The draw doesn’t know which card you hold or where you sit. Every card has the same chance of completing a pattern. The only ways a seat matters are practical: whether you can hear the caller and see the board clearly.

If a lucky dauber makes the night more fun, keep it. Just don’t spend extra chasing luck.

Myth 6: “Playing more cards doesn’t help”

False, in the other direction. More cards really do raise your chance of winning, in direct proportion. Six cards give you six times the chance of one. The catch is that they also cost six times as much, so your average return per dollar doesn’t improve. Our guide on how many bingo cards to play works through it.

Myth 7: “Nobody wins in the first few calls”

False. Thanks to the free space, a line through the center needs only four numbers, so a bingo can happen on the fourth call. It’s rare for any one card: getting four corners on the first four calls, for example, is a 1 in 1,215,450 chance. But in a big room, early winners are normal. With 1,000 cards in play, our simulations put the typical first single-line winner at call 11.

Myth 8: “Rows win three times more often than columns”

Partly true, but exaggerated. In a busy room, horizontal lines do win more often than vertical ones. That’s because a row needs one number from each of the five letters, while a column needs five numbers from the same 15-ball range.

In our simulations of a 500-card room, the winning line was:

So rows beat columns by roughly 5 to 4, not 3 to 1. The real standout is the diagonals: there are only two, but both run through the free space and need just four numbers, so each diagonal wins far more often than any single row or column.

None of this changes which card wins. It just tells you where to look first.

Myth 9: “Every bingo card ever printed is unique”

Mostly false. There are about 552 septillion (5.52 × 10^26) possible 75-ball cards, so randomly generated cards almost never repeat. But hall paper isn’t random each time. Manufacturers print from fixed series, commonly 9,000 unique faces, and the same faces appear in pack after pack. That’s what lets a caller verify a card by its perm number. Learn more in how bingo cards are made.

Myth 10: “Bingo is a church-basement game”

Outdated. Churches helped make bingo popular in the 1930s, but today they’re a minority of operators. In Massachusetts in 2023, 22 of the state’s 68 licensed bingo organizations were churches or religious groups. Thirty-two were fraternal organizations and eight were veterans organizations. A 2005 study of Indiana found only about 16% of licensed bingo organizations could be classified as churches or religious schools.

Myth 11: “Bingo was invented in America”

False. The American game took its name and modern form around 1929, when toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe began selling “Bingo” after seeing a carnival game called Beano. But the game traces back to Italian lotto, played by about 1530, and later European versions like tombola. Our history of bingo covers the full story.

Myth 12: “The man who made the first cards went insane”

Unsupported. The story goes that Lowe hired Columbia University math professor Carl Leffler to create 6,000 unique cards and that the work drove him mad. It’s a great tale, but reference sources describe it as a bingo myth, and we found no reliable evidence for the insanity part.

What’s actually true about winning bingo?

Strip away the myths and two facts remain:

1. Your chance of winning is your cards ÷ all cards in play.
2. Every card has the same odds for any pattern.

Everything useful follows from those: play an amount you can afford and track, look for quieter sessions and never miss a win. See our bingo strategy tips and the full bingo odds guide for the details.