The newest variant of online bingo to hit the web is typically labelled as 52-Ball bingo, but in reality, the game uses playing cards rather than traditional balls. As soon as you learn that fact, the reason for the odd ball count becomes immediately apparent, but what else does this game have to offer in comparison to the classic 90 and 75-Ball bingo games that are already hugely popular across the globe?

This bingo format has a lot in common with the 30-Ball and 40-Ball varieties you may have seen offered in the past. Each player participating in a round is given a five-card poker hand as their ‘ticket’, and there’s just a single prize on offer for matching all five of the cards in your hand. This makes 52-Ball a fast-paced game of bingo, with each round typically only lasting two or three minutes.

Some versions of 52-Ball bingo allow players to purchase multiple hands for each game, but the majority limit players to just one set of cards per round. This obviously limits the size of the prize pool available, and many sites will counteract this by allowing players to purchase tickets at different prices, with the more expensive tickets awarding larger sums if they turn out to be the winner.

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The rules of 52-ball bingo are as follows:

• Before you can play, you’ll need to purchase a bingo ticket or ‘hand’ as they are often referred to in 52-Ball bingo. Most games will offer a range of different prices for each hand – typically, you might expect to have options of £0.25, £0.50, £1.00, and £2.00. Some games may allow you to purchase more than one for each round.

• Once you have purchased your hand(s), keep an eye on the countdown clock – the next game will often begin as soon as the current one has finished, but this may not always be the case. 

• When the game begins, an announcer will call out cards from a standard 52-card deck. You might think that there wouldn’t be enough possible combinations for a large number of players, but in this style of game, there is nothing preventing multiple players from holding the same card. 

• The computer will mark off any cards that you are holding, which are called by the announcer automatically. This is typically represented by a poker chip being placed on top of each card, but some games may choose to visualise things differently. 

• The first player to hit all five cards in their hand wins the single full house prize. 

• Some games will mix things up by adding bonus rounds, progressive jackpots, and other special rewards. These features are often what makes one game much more fun than the next, so it’s worth trying out as many different games as you can find to see which ones you like best.

As we’ve already mentioned, the tickets used in 52-Ball bingo are comprised of standard playing cards, each including five cards. The idea is that each ticket is a unique five-card poker hand, but you don’t need to be familiar with any kind of poker to have fun playing 52-Ball bingo.

Some games will also offer a simplified view where traditional bingo balls are used instead of playing cards, which can sometimes be helpful if the game allows you to purchase many hands for each round.

Some bingo formats offer players a little bit of strategy in how they choose to play each round, but that is not the case with 52-Ball bingo. Once a round has started, there is very little that you can do to influence your chances unless the game offers a bonus round of some kind which involves an element of skill.

One thing that can be worth keeping in mind is that the more expensive tickets will always reward you with a higher value prize. Because most 52-Ball games only allow you to purchase a single ticket, and the cost of those tickets tends to max out at a low value, such as £2.00, it’s usually best to pay a little more for the higher-value tickets.

Additionally, you might want to keep an eye on how busy your favourite games are at different times of the week. A busier room will mean a larger prize pool but will also increase the odds of more than one player hitting their full house on the same card. When this occurs, the prize is divided equally between each winning player, which can mean that you will end up winning less despite the prize fund being larger.

One more thing – just as when playing other fast-paced bingo games, it’s often worth keeping an eye out for games that offer guaranteed prizes. If a game guarantees a £100 full house prize, but the number of participating players is very low, this will have the effect of temporarily increasing the game's Return-to-Player percentage. These rounds are by the most rewarding to get involved with financially, so it’s worth knowing which days and times are likely to offer such games.

I haven’t found too many 52-Ball games that offer progressive jackpots compared to the classic 90 and 75-Ball variants. Such jackpots are incredibly common in those formats but seem to be offered much less frequently by 52-Ball games. When a game does offer such a jackpot, you’ll usually need to complete your hand in a very small number of calls – perhaps as few as nine or ten.

Because 52-Ball bingo is not as common or popular as the classical formats, the size of any jackpots you do find offered in these games are likely to be much smaller than you may find elsewhere. Nevertheless, any jackpot win is a good jackpot in my view, and the short time required to play a round of 52-Ball bingo means that you can get a lot of games in – and therefore, more chances of winning a jackpot - during a short period of time. 

With 50-Ball, 40-Ball, and 30-Ball bingo variants already widely available at online bingo sites, some players will no doubt question whether there is a need for yet another bingo format. In the case of 52-Ball bingo, I’d say that the answer is absolutely yes! The playing card-based nature of these games gives them a very different feel from the more traditional bingo formats. I’d probably say that 52-Ball is my favourite of all the super-fast bingo variants currently available online. If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s well worth seeking out a 52-Ball game during your next bingo session!

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