who funds it The players fund it, and the operator administers it. That is why the pool can grow without bound and why a reduced in-round prize is the visible cost of it. The jackpot desk in this series follows the funding, seeding and drop rules of a networked pool in full; this page only places the bingo version of it.
Bingo Desk / The linked jackpot
Rooms 03
A prize fed by rooms that are not yours
The largest figure in a bingo lobby is usually the network jackpot, and it belongs to no room in particular. It is a pool fed by a small contribution from every ticket sold across every linked room, and it is paid only when a coverall is completed inside a stated number of calls - which is a much narrower condition than it sounds.
Room ticket
- Sheet
- BD-56-09
- Subject
- The linked jackpot
- Funded by
- a contribution per ticket
- Condition
- a coverall inside N calls
A share4 room types: the prize is a stated percentage of the tickets sold in the round
A floor1 room type: a share with a guaranteed minimum the operator adds to
A fixed sum3 room types: a printed prize the operator owes whatever the room sold
Direct answerA linked jackpot is a pool fed by a small contribution from every ticket sold in every room connected to it. It is paid when one player completes a coverall - every number on the card - inside a stated number of calls, usually within a handful of calls of the theoretical minimum. Every ordinary round contributes to it, most rounds pay nothing from it, and the contribution is part of the ticket price rather than a separate purchase.
Fed by every linked roomPaid on a coverall in N callsOne winner, not a shareThe contribution is in the price
How the pool is fed
The mechanism is the same shape as the progressive jackpot on a slot machine: a stated amount from each qualifying ticket leaves the round's own pot and joins a pool that no single room owns. A room that joins the network therefore pays slightly less in its own round - a reduced full house, a smaller line prize - and in exchange every ticket in it buys a chance at the network figure.
Two consequences follow that are worth separating. The first is arithmetic: the jackpot is not funded by the operator, it is funded by the players in every linked room, and the size of the pool is a measure of how much has been contributed rather than of how generous the operator is. The second is structural: the qualifying condition is what makes the pool grow, because a condition that is almost never met is a condition that pays out infrequently. Where a jackpot is described as having been won recently, the pool is smaller for exactly that reason.
The condition, in numbers
A coverall means every number on the card is marked. The theoretical minimum is the number of cells a card holds once blanks and a free square are excluded - nine calls on a thirty-ball card, fifteen on a ninety-ball card, twenty-four on a seventy-five-ball card with a free centre. A qualifying jackpot normally requires the coverall inside a number of calls only slightly above that minimum, because that is the condition that keeps the pool climbing.
A player does not need to compute the probability to understand the shape of it. The window is a small number of calls above the minimum, the probability of reaching it is small and fixed, and the same small probability applies in every round in every linked room. What varies between rounds is the prize, because the pool is what has accumulated.
Worked example - a linked pool, its contribution and its condition (illustrative)
Contribution per ticket to the network jackpot: 0.01 on a 0.10 ticket, i.e. 10% of the ticket price
Tickets sold across the linked network in one hour: 120,000
Added to the pool in that hour: 120,000 x 0.01 = 1,200.00
Pool at the start of the hour: 148,000.00
Pool at the end of the hour, if nobody qualifies: 149,200.00
Rounds played across the network in that hour, at one every 4 minutes per room across 300 rooms: 4,500
Rounds in the hour that paid anything from the pool, on the ordinary outcome: 0
The condition, stated plainly: the jackpot pays on a coverall inside a window a few calls above the card’s minimum. In a ninety-ball room that is a fifteen-number card completed inside a stated number of calls rather than the fifty a full house ordinarily takes.
What that means for a single player’s ticket: it contributes 0.01 whether or not the round is the one, and it holds a small fixed chance of the whole pool, which is the same structure as a lottery ticket bought with every round - agreed, small, and priced into the ticket rather than added to it.
What is different about a linked jackpot
difference 1
difference 2
the condition is the product A coverall window is not a full house. The room's ordinary full house is won most rounds; the jackpot's coverall window is won rarely, and the difference between those two conditions is the entire reason a large pool exists.
difference 3
one winner It is not shared between rooms. The pool is paid to one qualifying player, in one room, and the rooms that contributed to it are not compensated. A player in a room that has never produced a jackpot has paid for somebody else's, which is a plain description of how a shared pool works rather than a complaint about it.
difference 4
the odds do not move A bigger pool is not a better chance. The condition is fixed by the card and the call window, so the probability is the same whether the pool holds 1,000 or 1,000,000. A larger pool changes the value of the chance, not the chance - and this desk's myths page deals with the belief that a pool is "due".
What to look for on a jackpot room's page
- The contribution. Some rooms state it as a percentage of the ticket price and others bury it in a reduced in-round prize. Either way it is part of what the ticket costs.
- The qualifying condition, stated exactly. A coverall inside a number of calls is a precise statement; "a chance to win the jackpot" is not. The exact figure is what makes the pool's size explicable.
- Whether the pool has a cap, a seed or a drop rule. A pool that is capped, reseeded below a floor or scheduled to drop on a date behaves differently from one that only grows - the jackpot desk covers those rules.
- Whether it is one network or several. Two pools with the same headline figure can be funded by very different numbers of tickets, and the number behind the figure is the thing a player cannot see.