Bingo Baker makes it easy to conduct your next bingo game entirely online. Here's how:
This is optional but recommended (as the owner of Bingo Baker, I'm a little biased). A membership gives you a nice dashboard to keep track of your games, privacy control (so your game doesn't end up in search engines) and unlimited image uploads. It's only $24.95 for a lifetime membership. Sign up here.
You can create a bingo card using Bingo Baker's simple bingo card creation tool.
Or you can try to find a bingo card that meets your criteria. If you find a perfect one, great! If you need to make some changes to it, you can clone it, and modify your clone. You may want to clone it anyway even if you aren't going to change it. This will add it to your account, and it will prevent anyone from changing the card (except you of course).
After you have created or located your game, you'll notice the right side of the page has a big Play Online heading. In that section you'll see the URL that lets your players generate a card.
Copy that URL, and distribute it to your players however you see fit. Use email, instant messengers, put it on your website, send it via carrier pigeon. It doesn't matter.
The page at that URL allows your players to generate their own unique bingo card. If you're curious how it works, just go to the URL yourself in a web browser, and you'll see what your players will see.
Member Benefits: 1) Bingo Baker Members can customize the text displayed on the play online page. 2) Members can use Bingo Baker to email cards directly to players. 3) Members can prompt players to enter their name (or other identifier) before getting a card. 4) Members can "lock" the game to prevent players from generating more cards.
If your game is going to last multiple days, make sure your players bookmark their bingo card, or email their card URL to themselves so they can get back to it. Bingo Baker has a little menu on the bottom right of the card page your players can use to print or email their card to themselves. Bingo Baker will remember which items they marked on their card.
After all your players have generated their card, you can start announcing items one-by-one. Bingo Baker provides a call list for you (available on your bingo page), or you can call the items yourself by pulling them out of a hat. Just vocally call out the item.
If you're not physically in the same room as your players, you can "call" the items via email, instant messenger, carrier pigeon, etc. It doesn't matter. Bingo Baker doesn't handle that part.
When a player announces that they have a bingo, you can inspect their card and verify that they have a bingo based on the items you've called. If you're not in the same physical space as your players, you can have your player send you their card URL (using the menu at the bottom-right corner of the card). Or you can lookup their card directly in the BingoBaker "View Cards" area (this feature is only available to members).
Bingo Baker doesn't automatically alert you of a bingo because there are so many different ways to play bingo (you could be looking for a "normal" bingo, blackout, 4 corners, a specific shape or something else). And part of the fun of bingo is that players have to be paying attention to know when they got a bingo.
Member Benefits: Bingo Bakers members can quickly verify a bingo by looking up a player's card. Even better, if you use the built-in call list, Bingo Baker will automatically "gray-out" any squares that the player marked which were not actually called.
Non-members of Bingo Baker: If you're worried about cheaters generating multiple cards, require each player to email their card URL before you start calling items. If they get a bingo, you can verify it yourself using the URL. Bingo Baker Members don't have this problem, since they can lock the creation of new cards, view all the cards in play (in real-time) and see the date and time a card was created.