Bingo’s not just a game — it’s a community

A lot of numbers are floating around a packed, smoky Clovis Bingo Hall, and only some of them are coming from the bingo caller.

Shannon Witt, 42, a volunteer (they call themselves indentured parents) at this night’s Buchanan High School fundraiser, is concerned with these numbers: pep squad uniform (including hair ribbon and pom-poms), $447.45; cheer camp, $125; cheer sweats, $210; rhinestones on cheer sweats, $33; rhinestone T-shirt, $30; team backpack, six T-shirts and sweat shorts, $167.45. With tax, a grand total of $1,033.39.

Working the bingo games, Witt earns credits to offset her daughter’s school expenses. Witt’s been making the equivalent of about $20 a night, twice a week, for three years.

Bingo player Linda Schaeffer, 64, is keeping track of her monthly bingo budget – a $675 pension check. She says most of the people sitting at her table spend at least as much as she does. None of them disagree.

Then there’s the number that 1960s rock group Three Dog Night once dubbed the loneliest: One.

People pack the bingo hall to be with other people.

“I started coming after my mother died,” says volunteer Barbara Gibbs, 50. “I needed something to do with my time. I didn’t want to be alone.”

The hall doesn’t open until 6:15 on most bingo nights, which are Saturday through Tuesday. The crowd typically starts forming about 4 p.m. By 5 p.m., it’s hard to find a parking place in the aging shopping center on Bullard Avenue.

Clovis, Calif., is a city that prides itself on a sense of old-fashioned community, family values and good schools that produce accomplished scholars and athletes. Clovis is like taking Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Woebegon, “where … all the children are above average,” and resettling it around rodeo grounds.

But all those letterman jackets for the above-average children can cost $400 to $500. That can leave parents scrambling. So, at bingo, community and cash cozy up.

Kim Smith, 48, a parent volunteer with two high school-aged children, watches Saturday night bingo players surrounded by ashtrays, half-filled Styrofoam coffee cups and good-luck charms; she invokes the city’s oft-quoted slogan:

“Clovis – a way of life.”

Charlotte MacDougall, 79, frequently described as a firecracker, has china-doll blue eyes, soft white curls and a self-described bingo addiction.

“I don’t know what I’d do if it wasn’t for bingo,” she says. “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. And I meet so many nice people here.

“And some not so nice,” she adds in a hand-shielded, whispered aside.

Even though MacDougall doesn’t smoke, she always sits on the smoker’s side of the hall. The divide between the smoking north side and the non-smoking south side goes deeper than the use of tobacco.

Those on the smokers’ side say folks in the north hall are a rowdy, hard-edged bunch.

The south hall-ers say the non-smoking section (where people really do shush talkers) is filled with people who can’t multi-task and don’t know how to have fun.

Tensions between the two sides heightened recently when Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a state bill to ban electronic bingo. The law goes into effect Jan. 1; charity bingo representatives say it could cut revenues by 40 percent.

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Players at the Clovis Bingo Hall still daub paper cards, and admire the prowess of those who can play a dozen at a time – colorfully marking numbers shouted out by a bingo caller. But they also have been playing bingo electronically, using small computers. Players decide how many electronic cards they want to play on the machines and then pay the bingo operators accordingly. The machines have a wireless connection to the bingo game and automatically mark electronic cards with each called number. Players also can enter numbers manually.

Indian tribes successfully contended that these electronic machines violate gaming compacts with the state.

The Clovis hall tried to get customers to sign a petition protecting the computers – saying that banning the machines would hurt fundraising. Different school organizations and charities pay a share of the rent for the hall and take turns running the bingo games, receiving the profits from their night. Profits can be designated for specific uses, such as helping parents pay for pep squad uniforms.

Those in the shushing, non-smoking side overwhelmingly rejected the petition. They want to return to traditional bingo, where those who can daub the most paper have better odds of winning.

The smoking, computer-favoring side almost unanimously signed, favoring conversation over concentration.

“I don’t want to think too much. Our beloved governor ruined that,” says MacDougall with a vigorous shake of her white curls.

She points to Schaeffer, a bingo buddy who always sits across the table from her.

“She can play six cards like nobody’s business and even get up and get coffee,” she says admiringly.

Schaeffer and her husband, both retired from the grocery business, moved in 2001 to Clovis from the San Francisco Bay area.

“We didn’t know anyone. I found myself a bingo hall, and that’s how I made all my friends,” Schaeffer says.

Now MacDougall and Schaeffer are fixtures in their specific seats at their specific table just about every night. Bingo players tend to be territorial. MacDougall plays three paper cards, Shaeffer six, and they both play electronic bingo machines. Electronic bingo costs between $41.50 and $61 to play 36 to 48 cards. Paper bingo costs $15 for a pack of six cards; there are discounts for bulk purchases.

Radios aren’t allowed in the hall, but MacDougall, a rabid Bulldog football fan, brings one anyway and listens to games with an earpiece.

“A few weeks ago, she screamed out ’Touchdown!’ and the caller thought she had a bingo,” says Schaeffer.

If MacDougall or Shaeffer aren’t coming to bingo, they call the hall so no one will worry. Even when they aren’t there, no one sits in their chairs.

“They wouldn’t dare,” says MacDougall.

She describes the excitement of winning – having a card where the drawn numbers form a specified pattern, usually a straight line.

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“Your heart starts pounding when you see your number. You get real disappointed if someone else says ’Bingo!’ too and you have to share the prize. But if you see the other ’Bingo’ isn’t good, they made a mistake or something, then you cheer, but really softly so no one hears.”

A regular bingo game, with a single winner, pays $250. “Hot” bingos – where a designated number must complete the pattern – can pay $1,000.

It’s not your grandmother’s bingo – or maybe it is.

“When I was a teenager, my grandmother and mom use to play bingo in the trailer park,” says Ed Gibbs, 44, of Fresno, Calif. “I thought it was the craziest thing. Then I got older and realized why they liked it: You get to hang out with people. It’s a common thing.”

Gibbs started coming to the Clovis hall about a year ago as a player. He met Barbara – one of the volunteers who sell bingo cards and coffee and occasionally call out bingo numbers – and now they are newlyweds planning a honeymoon trip to Disneyland.

“A lot of couples meet at bingo,” says manager LuAnna Scott. “We have at least three married couples who met here.”

And then there’s a gentleman who shall remain unnamed. He dated so many bingo regulars that volunteers nicknamed him “Bingo-Ho.”

“Some volunteers were relieved when he finally got married,” says Scott.

The man and his wife and his many ex-girlfriends still all come to the bingo games.

MacDougall is single, but she says she never flirts.

“You get friendly with them and then something happens and they die and you feel so bad,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand.

This starts people at her table to talking about the times people have died at bingo.

“I was calling the night the one lady died,” says J.P. Done, a volunteer who on this night gets to play a free game for his 30th birthday. “I stopped the game for five minutes. No one has sat in her chair since then.”

Death, courtship, politics, friendship, and the placing of coffee orders all play out as the caller shouts out numbers. Players mark their cards to see if a pattern will emerge from randomness and give them a pay-out.

LuAnna Scott, the hall manager, says the bingo hall is a hub of connection.

“It’s a community,” says Scott. “Everyone here, whether they’re working or spending money on bingo, is helping our schools.”

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Destrie Rathwick, 44, of Sanger, Calif., who plays four days a week, screams “Bingo!”

She has just won $1,000 on a “hot” bingo.

“I’ll go spend the money on bingo,” she says. “I’ll bring it right back here.”

There are many new bingo sites that offer online gamers free play

Bingo is also known as a popular family game. It is common to see families playing together while visiting their loved ones. The grandpa fills the card and the grandson yells “bingo” in his little voice.

In some parts of the world, bingo has become more adaptive to the different needs of various generations. For example, to make bingo games easier for the younger players, the numbers are being replaced with recognizable pictures of dogs, cats, chairs, bags and other common items. These pictures can be understood even by a four-year-old.

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Crown Bingo CMs take the Crown in CM of the Year Vote

Crown Bingo has been awarded the CM of the Month title for October. The poll, conducted by the CM of the Year website, collected votes from online bingo players from all over the UK, with Crown Bingo receiving the most votes from UK bingo players to be awarded the accolade.

With an incredible journey to the top spot, Crown Bingo began the race in 4th place after the first week. After slipping down to 11th place in week two, they bounced back to hold onto the top spot for the final two weeks! CM Star polled the most individual votes to help the 15-strong Chat Team to the top spot.

Talking about the team’s win, CM manager Andy Osman said: “I am very happy and so proud of the CMs. We have a fantastic team who do a great job in creating and maintaining such a welcoming and fun environment for our players.”

Chat and community are vital parts of Crown Bingo who host a dedicated community section of the site as well as a blog, Facebook page and numerous community based promotions. There are now six bingo rooms available at Crown Bingo, each with a dedicated chat room where team bingo, tournament bingo, chat games and quizzes take place on a regular basis.

Managing Director Dan Smyth said: “We have a fantastic chat team at Crown Bingo and it’s great that this has been recognised in the CM of the Month awards.”

Crown Bingo have a full schedule of promotions planned for November and December, including a Thanksgiving themed bingo promotion at the end of the month and the launch of a big new feature next week. With a big Christmas Special planned for December, Crown is set to see out the year with a series of great promotions!

Senator changes view on gambling, bingo

A state senator who blocked legislation to change the rules for bingo in Greene County and had spoken out against gambling’s influence in Alabama, is now the attorney for a group planning to open a gambling hall that would compete with nearby Greenetrack.

Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, is the legal counsel for the Eatman School Alumni Association, which announced in September that it had obtained a bingo license from the Greene County sheriff.

Alumni association president James Morrow said the group hopes other non-profit groups will join them to establish a new Greene County bingo parlor.

Morrow said he’s most interested in opening on the site adjacent to the Cotton Patch restaurant, where construction has begun on a new building on the 30-plus acres of land now owned by Sidetrack, LLC.

‘The last thing I heard from Sen. Sanders was that Sidetrack was going to provide that facility for us,’ Morrow said. ‘I imagine the building will be going up in the next week or so. I’m just waiting on word to go ahead with the organization.’

Morrow also said he had yet to speak to anyone from Sidetrack himself. Rather, Sanders has been his liaison with Sidetrack.

Morrow also said Sanders was providing the legal work at no cost.

‘He’s doing it pro bono because, you know, right now we don’t have the necessary funding,’ Morrow said. ‘If we can get the operation

going, then his fees will be paid at that point.’

Sanders did not return several calls to his home and law office on Thursday and Friday seeking comment.

Sanders broke with Senate protocol earlier this year by blocking a bill that would have changed the rules for bingo in Greene County. Ordinarily, legislators do not interfere with local bills outside their district if the local legislative delegation is united.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Bobby Singleton, would have removed authority over bingo from Sheriff Ison Thomas and given it to the Greene County Racing Commission.

Under the constitutional amendment that legalized electronic bingo in Greene County in 2003, only charitable organizations can be licensed to operate bingo.

Yet questions have arisen over the legality of bingo operations at Greenetrack, a private company. Greenetrack officials have said that it serves only as the host site of the games and does not operate them. They maintain that the actual bingo operators are the more than 80 Greene County charities and non-profit groups that have licenses for that purpose.

Sanders, too, has previously questioned the legality of bingo, noting that its profits are unknown because Alabama does not require public disclosure of gambling profits.

In April, he voiced concerns over bingo operations in Alabama in one of the regular columns that he has published in several newspapers in his nine-county district for the past 20 years.

‘Electronics have made bingo parlors into low-scale casinos,’ Sanders wrote in April in the weekly column titled ‘Senate Sketches.’

He went on to write that bingo’s power influences everyone from lawmakers to the news media, which ‘does not aggressively raise how gambling is unregulated, that it does not benefit the state and that it ties up the Legislature.

‘Bingo is so powerful it has friends distrusting friends, allies turning against allies, and members of both the Republican and Democratic caucuses threatening to bolt …,’ Sanders wrote. ‘I hope it’s not too powerful for Alabama.’

Sanders also described in that entry why he stood in the way of another senator’s bill during this year’s Legislative session.

Sanders cited the Greene County sheriff’s objection to relinquishing oversight of Greenetrack, West Alabama’s only legalized gambling facility, to a three-member gaming commission. This was one element of Singleton’s sweeping bill that would have changed many of the rules regarding Greenetrack’s operation.

‘Sheriff Thomas contacted me when he heard that local legislation had been filed to transfer his authority to regulate bingo,’ Sanders wrote on April. ‘He said that no one had talked to him about it. I agreed to help. I just could not contribute to the injustice.’

But a document obtained by The Tuscaloosa News shows otherwise.

Thomas did not return calls seeking comment, but his signature is on a March 19, 2007, document that says he has no concerns about the racing commission assuming oversight duties of Greenetrack.

‘I, Ison Thomas, Sheriff of Greene County,’ the document says, ‘do not oppose current legislative efforts to change the regulating of bingo in Greene County to the Greene County Racing Commission.’

It’s not clear why Thomas changed his mind, and the reversal also confused Singleton.

Singleton, D-Greensboro, described in September the drama that unfolded in the Senate once he and a Macon County senator introduced similar bills regarding bingo operations in their respective counties.

Once Singleton and Sen. Myron Penn, D-Union Springs, learned of Sanders’ opposition, they spoke with him, Singleton said.

‘At that time, [Sanders] said he was not in support of the bill because the sheriff of Greene County had contacted him and stated he was not aware of the bill and, therefore, wanted Sen. Sanders to represent him in that manner,’ Singleton said. ‘We knew that not to be true, because the sheriff of Greene County had already signed a letter saying he was in support of the bill removing him from the regulator of bingo and moving the oversight to a three-member commission.’

Sanders, in his ‘Senate Sketches,’ said he attempted to compromise with Singleton to allow Thomas to appoint the racing commissioners.

‘The powers that be would not agree,’ Sanders said. ‘I held on to my vote.’

At the end of his ‘Senate Sketches No. 1090,’ Sanders reflected on his acquired understanding of what bingo means to the state.

‘Sometimes,’ he wrote, ‘we think we know about something but we don’t. When we face it in struggle, we know it differently. I have known about gambling in Alabama for years but did not perceive its dimensions clearly.

‘Now, my eyes are opened wide.’

Castle Technologies Inc. to Prepare White Paper About $48 Billion Online Gaming Industry

Castle Technologies, Inc. (Pink Sheets:CSTL) is pleased to announce that the Company will prepare a White Paper to provide an informative insight to the growing number of global online poker players and the business as a whole. The White Paper is expected to be completed within the next three weeks and customers and investors interested in receiving a copy can go to the company’s Web site, www.castletechnologiesinc.com, and fill out a request form.
Several members of Castle Technologies, Inc. will contribute to the White Paper in order to provide factual information on their new software currently being Alpha tested. Analysts project the online gaming industry will be $48 billion by 2010 and exceed $125 billion by 2015. The White Paper will also discuss the poker games being developed by the Company: Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and 7-Card Stud as well as the patent pending progressive jackpot features and new tournament structures for the online gambling software.
“We’re writing this paper to present the information about our online poker software to our customers and investors and to demonstrate how our patent pending progressive jackpot feature makes the game more entertaining for the players. We want to inform them about the fundamentals of our online poker software and the online poker industry. The White Paper will also define how our software relates to our customers’ satisfaction in participating in these games, and increased revenues for the Company and our investors,” stated David Comeau, President and CEO of Castle Technologies, Inc.
About Castle Technologies, Inc.:
Castle Technologies is a software development and servicing company specializing in providing innovative Web based gaming to the growing international online population. Its market focus is the multi-player poker enthusiast that has continued to spread internationally and grow at a phenomenal rate. The Company will license these products and services to offshore companies, and receive royalties based on the usage of the systems and support in place.
Safe Harbor Act: Statements regarding financial matters in this press release other than historical facts are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The Company intends that such statements about the Company’s future expectations, including future revenues and earnings, technology efficacy and all other forward-looking statements be subject to the safe harbors created thereby. The Company is a development stage company who continues to be dependent upon outside capital to sustain its existence. Since these statements (future operational results and sales) involve risks and uncertainties and are subject to change at any time, the Company’s actual results may differ materially from expected results.

Online bingo craze in the UK

Once the transition took place to the Internet, Bingo games have dramatically changed their accessibility for millions of people sitting at their home comfortably to play enchanting online bingo games of assorted varieties through 1900 online Bingo sites. The fun and thrill hit the roof when they hit a jackpot, because apart from Bingo all the sites also provide ample chances to win big prize monies through the side games, slot machines being popular ones.

Latest news is Crown Bingo has crowned one of their players online, who hit the biggest jackpot ever offered by them to a player playing the side games. The lucky winner is a lady aged 52, Lillian Gibson from Lancashire, (need any more proof for the frenzy of British lady folks in playing online Bingo and other games?) and what she did was playing the popular side game namely Pirates Plunder. Plundering the huge progressive jackpot of £17,186.04 took her only £1.50 to be wagered for playing 15 lines at 10p a stake!

She sat dazed and scaring the computer screen in disbelief, when she struck the mountain of a prize money with as little as £1.50 stake. Then coming back to senses, her joy found no bound to contact Crown Bingo operators to receive the big bingo prize. She happily revealed that she is planning a big family holiday, depositing on a holiday home in Spain as also celebrating a wonderful Christmas this year.

The point is to caution you – Beware this joyful jolt can occur to you anytime while playing your choicest Bingo games or any other slot machines games online!