Check out any bingo forums and you’ll generally find two main subjects being raised: Firstly, some sites are better at paying you your winnings than others (and this gets discussed alot); secondly, why do certain players keep winning?

Given the anecdotal evidence found on forums alone, there are thousands of disgruntled bingo fans who have shifted their allegiance between sites because the same players seem to keep winning, leading them to assume that certain sites are fixed.

Anyone Can Get Lucky if They Buy Enough Tickets

But is this really even possible, yet alone likely? Firstly if a site were rigged, would the perpetrators keep letting the same person win? In short, no. It doesn’t look good. Not drawing too much attention to yourself is close to the top of Page One in any fraudster’s handbook, so if the same person keeps hitting bingo on your favourite site, check out how much time they spend on the site and how many tickets they buy. You’ll find that they spend most of their time and spare cash on playing bingo.

Is it Even Feasible to Fix Games?

With the majority of complaints on forums possibly based on jealousy or even in some circumstances ignorance, you might wonder do these players have grounds for suspicion at all about the integrity of the bingo sites that they play? After all, bingo isn’t like a slot game: Someone has to win every time. Actually, it is theoretically possible for operators to cheat their customers, but it would take some doing. If you were a dodgy bingo operator wanting to scam your customers you’d have to meddle with the software in one of two ways:

Firstly, you could bypass the random number generator and choose the numbers yourself to match tickets bought by you. Cracking the software to do this will be virtually impossible as it’s all heavily encrypted and invariably certified as safe by eCOGRA, so the only way is to know someone on the inside – a corrupt employee working for the software provider, who could get into the code and fiddle the numbers. Anyone intelligent and knowledgeable enough to pull this off would be unlikely to want to work on an illegal bingo fiddling scam when they’re already earning a small fortune working in software development. You’ve got more chance of winning the National Lottery than you have of finding someone stupid enough to risk throwing away a career and acquiring a criminal record just to skim a few quid from your bingo site.

You’d then need to set up fake profiles, which involves a lot of work if your audit trail is to look remotely credible: You’d need hundreds of them to convincingly pull it off, which means hundreds of bogus bank accounts, forged IDs and more. The admin alone would cost thousands, and that’s without factoring in the stress of wondering when you’re going to get caught.

Alternatively you can adjust the prizes, jackpots and (if they’re variable) ticket prices, to give yourself an increased house edge. Again, to do this you’d need to be able to crack the software open which would require an inside job and given that you’d then be using figures that would be out of step with any other site using the same software, you’d stick out like a sore thumb.

From the potential perpetrator’s view, the whole thing also lacks credibility. Anyone capable of pulling together the kind of expertise and take on the risk needed to do any of the above will turn their nose up at a bingo scam: It’s not exactly Ocean’s Eleven – in fact it’s about as uncool as you can get, and the returns wouldn’t be worth the risk.

Be Wary of Standalone Sites

The way forward, then for any aspiring bingo con artist is clear, yet also fully legal: You’ll need to set up a site with your own, in-house software. That way you can offer low expected returns by offering lower jackpots than your competitors. Bingo sites are not required to advertise expected returns explicitly, so you can get away with it and maybe even prosper if your presentation is good enough. You will, though, need to pay a small fortune in development costs and ultimately gain a reputation for offering low jackpots – you can’t beat the forums, after all.

The message for players is clear: Stick to sites using established, certified software and you can’t really go wrong: The real criminals of this world have bigger fish to fry…

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  1. by spy 007 October 17, 2014 at 11:55pm

    I really do think these bingo sites should be monitored, I myself thought these had some sort of fiddle going on certain people names constantly show up as winners, more than a couple of times in a night day after day night after night the same winners, I thought this could be possible jealousy or some thing disgruntled players, but going into different rooms the same things were being said, same winners constantly, I have also been on other very well know sites where the same thing is happening, now you cant tell me that the same names that crop up as winners are lucky day in day out week after week ,
    a lady from one room we were in admitted she had used over £1000 in the matter of a of approx. 5 weeks had a couple of small wins nothing too write home about she hadn't realised the amount until she got her bank statement, she said she almost collapsed when she realised hoe much she had spent 3 pages full of well know site , few days later she won a few games again nothing too shout about , and decided to withdraw a bit of money certainly lot less than she had spent on this occasion, she did withdraw some of it , then she never won, but she did pull for 2 lines didn't get it then full house after 2 number pulled again, we all waited for her to win this after 13 numbers still never got the house , we were all shocked well you can imagine the comments cut a long story short, she actually phoned up too complain, but didn't do her any good, so if you going too use these places be very careful, as they are after your money, watch out how many times you deposit especially in a chat room, yes there are things like limiting your spending. Don't wait for your bank statement too shock you be carefull

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