At the heart of bingo is chance (or luck if you prefer) and the random way in which the numbers are called to be marked off on your Bingo card, or auto-daubed when online. This topic comes up about once every two to three weeks... I'm chatting with some online or land based Bingo players, and they tell me that there are numbers that come up more regularly than others at their favourite sites, or Bingo Halls. This inevitable leads to the question of whether the calling of the numbers is in some way fixed.

A real Bingo aficionado, Doreen, tells me that at her Saturday evening live venue in Hounslow it is "a well-known" fact that numbers ending in 0 ("blind" numbers- 30 is "blind 30") come up more often than they should do. I ask her what the method of random number generation is. She said it was a standard Lottery wind blow machine with 90 numbered balls and a ledge for them to be collected when the next number is required.

I asked how she thought that the balls ending in "0" were coming up more often than those that didn't. A "0" number should, on balance come up once every ten calls. I decided to put this myth to bed! I said that would varying the wind velocity used in the machine favour some balls more than the others? No. I asked whether she has examined the balls to see if the "0" balls were larger or smaller or not perfectly round, when compared to the other balls. She said she didn't know- but would ask to check them next time she was playing in Hounslow. Finally I said how did she know that the numbers ending in "0" came up more often than they should- did she keep records? "Of course not!" came the reply, "I'm not that sad!"

So I explained that unless she examined the balls next time she was in Hounslow and found something dodgy, which was extremely unlikely, this was just an urban myth. And like all urban myths, they grow when discussed unless refuted. I said that "blind" numbers probably stuck in her mind because there were nine of them in the game, and elicited the caller saying "Blind... " and then the number. This repetition of the word Blind may well subconsciously lead her to believe the "noughties" were coming up more often than ten times the non-noughties. A little reluctantly, Doreen said that I might be right, and that after examining the balls next time she played in Hounslow, she would keep a record, and come back to me with her conclusions.

My only fear, of course, is that by luck, chance, fluke, coincidence, kismet or whatever, the next time she plays it just so happens that a higher than average proportion of numbers ending in 0 come up! No amount of rational or pseudo-scientific explanation from me would ever then convince her!

Good luck, and may the randomness be with you!!