17-03-2021

Tombola bingo online

  1. Come join the fun at tombola, Britain’s biggest bingo app. We’ve got all of the games you know and love like bingo90 and bingo80 as well as some of our own unique bingo and casino games.
  2. Tombola Bingo uses their in-house software developers to create a broad range of bingo games, and while you won’t be finding video slots or any other classical game title on this casino, the unique bingo games being featured on Tombola Casino are nowhere to be found anywhere else!
  3. Tambola is one of the most famous games, played in almost various parts of the world. It is known by different names such as ‘Housie’, ‘Tombola’, ‘Bingo’ and many more. Generations to generations.

Wayne's tombola Review

Playing Tombola is a time-honored Italian holiday tradition. This lively game is typically played from Christmas Eve (while awaiting midnight Mass) through Epiphany (while awaiting La Befana!). The rules are simple enough to engage generations of relatives to play all at the same time!

I absolutely love tombola, and if you haven't tried it yet I recommend you click on the link above and check them out. They're my #1 pick on my Best Bingo Sites page and I can't speak highly enough of them.

They are 'Britain's Biggest Bingo Site' for a reason, and for me their popularity comes down to four things:

  1. Unique Games
  2. Great Community
  3. Safe Play
  4. Low Cost
Tombola Bingo Games

Unique Games

Right from the start, tombola decided to differentiate themselves from the crowd by building all their own bingo games in-house. This means that every single game in tombola is 100% unique.

Unlike other bingo software providers, tombola's games are designed in a minimalist fashion, with the focus on bingo and chat. You don't get loads of annoying side-games thrown in your face, and particularly since mobile bingo took off they've managed the move to mobile-first better than anyone. There are loads of truly imaginative bingo variants, most of which simply you can't play anywhere else. Plus, they're adding new games all the time.

Here is the current roster of available games:

  • Bingo90
  • Bingo80
  • Bingo75
  • Bingo60
  • Bingo50
  • BingoLite
  • Hamster Race
  • Tombola Roulette

Great community

I'm not one for getting too involved in the chat, but at tombola you can see that the players and chat hosts here do have a great bond going on. The chat hosts are all UK based (Sunderland area) and the ethos is all about getting more people engaged in the community, rather than getting more money out to them. The hosts are allowed to give away £1 bonuses regularly on chat games. I even won £2 the other day in a quick quiz the host did, after which I discovered that's the limit you can win in one week!

It helps that the chat window in tombola's rooms gets a lot of real estate. It usually takes up half the window if you're playing on desktop, and if you're on mobile it's probably the best experience of chatting and playing bingo at the same time. Something many other bingo softwares struggle with getting right.

When there is no game in play, the chat on mobile expands to full screen, but once a game begins, it shrinks but just enough so you can see your best ticket at the top. It still leaves you with a large enough chat area so that when you're typing (and your keyboard pops up) you can still follow the game and the chat. It sounds a simple thing, but too many other sites have got this horribly wrong and it puts you off chatting completely at some brands.

The on-site community is backed up by an active social media presence on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter. They are all definitely worth a follow as they'll keep you informed of the latest promotions as well as running all sorts of fun competitions to win merch and other tombola prizes.

They're quick to respond to any questions, and you can contact them via social, live help, freephone, email and snail mail.

Safe play

Tombola were a pioneer when it comes to all things responsible gambling, having developed loads of safe play tools years before they became the norm (and enforced on sites by the UK Gambling Commission).

I'm not sure if they still do this, but I remember they once gave me a £1 bonus just for setting a weekly deposit limit. That kind of thing was absolutely unheard of in this industry. I've been to tombola's HQ in Sunderland and spoken to the people there, and I was impressed by how the staff were not incentivised to increase player's spend.

When you first sign-up, your weekly deposit limit is set to a default of £250 per week, which is locked for 24 hours. After this period you can go in and change it to whatever works best for you. The maximum the site will allow to be spent in one week is £500. Plus, if your balance is ever over £250 they will not allow further deposits to be made.

Other safeplay tools at your disposal are:

  • Stake limits - set limits for individual games.
  • Timekeeper - alerts you to how much time you've spent on the site.
  • Game Freeze - stops you from playing a specific game for 24 hours.
  • Cooling Off - self exclude for up to 5 months.
  • Self Exclusion - self exclude 6+ months or permanently.

Low Cost

Perhaps the biggest reason for tombola's success has been their strategy of keeping ticket prices low while maintaining the ability to win decent sized prizes. Across the board there is a limit of £2 on every single game, and they have games that play for as little as 1p.

What this means is whatever your budget you can find a place to play, and play there for hours. It also means that every room has the potential to be a fair-and-square room, so you know you're not at a disadvantage compared to some sites where a player with deeper pockets than you might be maxing out on every game to increase their chances to win.

In Italy tombola is a very common family game played at Christmas, similar to bingo, the English version so popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland and, under many forms, all around the world. In Italy at Christmas Eve playing tombola is a must, with all the relatives united around grandparents and small children shouting when they win a prize (adults usually don't call a prize if there are children around, to let them win).
Other Features
The creche | Traditions | Tombola | Recipes | The Befana | December | Christmas memories | The Panettone | Tale of The Fishes | The Pandoro | Xmas Poems | Coloring Book | Paper Nativity | Assisi Christmas Concert 2013 | Old Xmas Cards | Paper Tree | Nativities in Art | Christmas Songs

Modern tombola

Modern tombola cards are in plastic and have on the numbers small plastic slots that can be closed down when the number is called, but traditionally they were closed by beans ('fagioli') or by pieces of orange peel, that you had to eat while playing. Fix a price for each card (ex. 1 dollar). The players buy the cards, and one of the players buys the 'cartellone .

How to play

The money from the sale of the cards is divided into five prizes, from lowest to highest, with tombola being the jackpot:
  • the 'ambo', two numbers on the same row
  • the 'terno', three numbers on the same row
  • the 'quaterna', four numbers on the same row
  • the 'cinquina', five numbers on the same row
  • the 'tombola', all numbers on the card
Then the one who has the cartellone takes the numbers out of the sack, one at a time, calling them loudly, and placing them on their box in the cartellone, and leaving time to the players to mark the number on their card.

What you need to play

Gala Bingo

  • a tabellone with squares containing all numbers from 1 to 90;
  • numbered cards, all of them different, each one containing blank squares and 15 squares containing random numbers, arranged in three rows, each containing five numbers; this cards are bought by the players
  • 90 wooden or plastic 'tombolini' with numbers from 1 to 90, which are kept in a container (usually a cloth sack).

The Smorfia

For more color in the game, each number has also a nickname, either local or from the 'Smorfia' napoletana'; see below the common expressions.
1 Il maschio
2 L'amore
3 Il malanno
4 Il piacere
5 La mano
6 Lo specchio
7 Le corna
8 Il petto delle donne
9 La rabbia
10 Il cannone
11 Gli imbrogli
12 I soldati
13 Il bellimbusto
14 I cornuti
15 Fidarsi
16 L'asino
17 La disgrazia
18 La tradizione
Games
19 Arrossire
20 Le feste
21 La donna
22 Il parroco
23 La suocera
24 Gli occhi
25 Il natale
26 I maccheroni
27 Il carceriere
28 Il matrimonio
29 Le castagne
30 Lo sciocco
31 La scopa
32 La gelosia
33 Gli anni di Cristo
34 L'adulterio
35 La gobba
36 La testa
37 Il frate
38 La folla
39 La smorfia
40 La pelle
41 Buffone
42 I pidocchi
43 La gioia
44 l'inganno
45 I pazzi
46 La serenata
47 Il morto che parla
48 La castità
49 Lo sforzo
50 Il pane
52 La gabbia
52 I muscoli
53 L'acquavite
54 Le bastonate

Tombola Bingo Online

55 La salute
56 La caduta
57 I vizi
58 La calunnia
59 La casa
60 La lite
61 Il ghiottone
62 I complimenti
63 La carovana
64 Le toppe
65 La pancia
66 Il successo
67 La pettegola
68 La minestra
69 L'elemosina
70 La sorpresa
71 La novità
72 La virilità
73 Il cappone
74 Il vagabondo
75 Il tempo bello
76 La chiave
77 Le gambe
78 L'ubriaco
79 Le frittelle
80 La bocca
81 Il bordello
82 L'onore
83 La coscienza
84 La chiesa
85 L'anima
86 Lo spiantato
87 Il palato
88 Trafficare
89 L'invidia
90 La paura