The Probability of Winning Coverall
Coverall has long been a Bingo crowd favorite. Players love to compete for this 75 Ball Bingo pattern because the games are long and exciting and the jackpot is almost always a good-sized sum. Winning a coverall game means that a player marks all 24 numbered squares on his board (plus the Free Space, of course) “covering all” of the board. Because winning coverall is quite difficult, online Bingo sites will often advertise coverall games by offering big prize winnings.
If you enjoy playing coverall games, or you’re thinking of buying into the next coverall game offered at your online Bingo website, you might want to consider your odds of winning. Your chances are, of course, dependent on the luck of the numbers drawn and the order in which they’re drawn. However, if you examine pure averages in the coverall game, you can come up with a fairly reliable set of statistics that helps determine winning probabilities.
This Bingo strategy first requires knowing one fact: how many cards are in play. The more cards there are in the game, the better the chance that the game will be won in a fewer amount of calls. This is simply due to the fact that more cards mean a wider range of number arrangements and thus an increase in the chance that these numbers will fall in the called order.
In a 500-card room, it is most likely (17.8% of the time) that a coverall will be won with 61 calls. Here is a list of the number of calls during a coverall game and the likelihood of scoring a Bingo on this specific called number.
Number of Calls Chance of Bingo:
- 54 1.25%
- 55 2.0%
- 56 3.4%
- 57 5.4%
- 58 8.4%
- 59 12.1%
- 60 15.7%
- 61 17.8%
- 62 16.2%
- 63 10.7%
- 64 4.5%
- 65 1.0%
You can also use this information to figure out your odds of winning a “call limit” game, where you have the chance to win a big jackpot if you Bingo within a certain amount of calls. A commonly used limit is 54 calls. Take a look at the percent chance you have of Bingo’ing on exactly 54 calls: 1.2%. Don’t forget about the possibility of someone winning on 53, 52, 51… calls. Add up these percentages to get your total. If there are 500 cards in play, there is only a 2.6% chance that someone will Bingo in 54 calls or less – not very good odds.
