Is Bingo Faceless Gambling?

Sometimes, you read a piece or an article published in a magazine, newspaper or an online weblog (blog), that you wish you could reply in part to what was written. This happened to myself this morning, when I was confronted with Chris Donkin’s, article called “Bingo is simply faceless gambling”. To paint a picture of Chris’ story… here was an elderly man, who goes by the moniker, “Citizen Chris” who is moved by the recent Bingo TV adverts. Chris decides to head down, one Thursday evening, to his local Bingo Hall for his first ever game of Bingo.

Within Chris’ article, he talks about his local bingo hall being overly bright and also the emptiness within. Players peppered around the hall, sitting on their own and constantly tutting at Chris for laughing, talking and dabbing too loudly during games. I’m surprised that Chris thought this behaviour was allowed. There are many games where loud behaviour is frowned upon during a match : Tennis, Golf, Snooker, Chess, to name but a few … concentration is the key. Chris then goes onto complain about the speed of the caller calls the numbers at, it’s too fast … now, I can’t comment on that callers style. But overall, the speed of the balls being called is sometimes governed by the bingo crowd themselves, if the crowd dictate the flow of the balls being called then it is hardly the callers fault if he appeases them. Perhaps, if Chris concentrated more on the numbers being called and less on the players around him it wouldn’t have been such a problem to him.

Finally, Chris, brings it down to the level he is happy with, he complains, “There was not a single snigger when the number 6 and 9 – 69 came out.” Right, so that’s it, finally! If the bingo crowd had shown more schoolyard behaviour towards innuendo thoughts at certain numbers being called then Chris would have been happy and written a completely different angle for his article.

To be fair, Chris does bring up some valid points in his article, such as the plight of bricks and mortar bingo halls in this economic downturn. But he never really goes into any great depth surrounding them. More intent to portray bingo as self-obsessed faceless gambling. Perhaps, next time he visits, he should leave his journalistic hat at the door and actually participate in the game without thinking about headlines for his newspaper article.