share A stated percentage, and whether it is of the tickets sold or of the room's own figure. "70% of ticket sales" is arithmetic a player can check; "a share of the prize pool" without a number is not.
Bingo Desk / The prize
Round 03
A share, a floor, or a sum somebody promised
Two rooms can sell the same ticket at the same price, run the same pattern, and pay two very different prizes, because they answer one question differently: when the room is quiet, who pays? This page separates the three answers and follows each one to the place it shows up - the size of the prize, and the size of the operator\u2019s exposure.
Room ticket
- Sheet
- BD-56-04
- Subject
- How the prize is fixed
- Families
- three
- Underfill risk
- the room, or the operator
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 bingo prize is fixed in one of three ways. A share is a stated percentage of the money the round took, so the prize rises and falls with the room. A floor is that share with a guaranteed minimum the operator pays if the room is quiet. A fixed sum is a set figure that does not move with the room at all. The first puts the underfill risk on the players; the other two put it on the operator.
Share: the room sets the prizeFloor: nobody gets less than the minimumFixed sum: the operator carries itAll three are priced somewhere
The three families, and what each one does to a quiet room
01 · A share of the round
Sixty to eighty per cent of the money taken is ordinary, with the rest kept by the operator. The prize is therefore honest arithmetic rather than a promise: it is whatever the room above the percentage produced. A quiet round produces a small prize and the players absorb it entirely - the operator's slice shrinks with the pot, but it never becomes a cost.
Read this family as a partnership with an unequal split: the players and the operator both take a cut of the same pool, and the size of the pool is decided by everybody in the room except the person reading the page.
02 · A share with a floor
The same percentage, with a stated minimum underneath it. Below the number of tickets that would fund the minimum, the operator adds the difference. The floor is a real risk the operator carries, and it is paid for in the way all guarantees are paid for: a slightly higher ticket price, a slightly smaller share above the floor, or a slightly tighter set of patterns.
For a player this is the one family where a very quiet room is not simply a very small prize. The floor is what stops a handful of players in a room at three in the morning winning almost nothing.
03 · A fixed sum
The prize is a figure printed on the room's page and it does not move. The room's size stops mattering to the winner and starts mattering entirely to the operator, whose exposure grows as the room empties. This is the family behind the phrase "guaranteed jackpot", and it is also the family where the operator's own terms matter most - see the arithmetic below.
The honest reading of a fixed sum is not generosity: it is a price. Across many rounds the operator's guarantees and surpluses are meant to net out, and the ticket price is set where they do.
Who carries the underfill, in one sentence
Under a share, a room that sells a third of what was expected pays a third of the expected prize, and the operator's revenue is a third of what was expected - everybody is disappointed and nobody is out of pocket. Under a floor, the players are protected and the operator is out of pocket by exactly the shortfall. Under a fixed sum, the same thing happens with no floor to stop it, because the promise is the floor. The three families are therefore not three kinds of generosity; they are three ways of allocating one risk.
Worked example - a guaranteed prize in a room that did not fill (illustrative)
The room's page states: full house, guaranteed 15.00
Ticket price: 0.10
Tickets actually sold in the round: 120
Money taken by the round: 120 x 0.10 = 12.00
Prize the operator owes under its own guarantee: 15.00
Shortfall the operator funds from its own money: 15.00 - 12.00 = 3.00
The share the guarantee represents of the money taken: 15.00 / 12.00 = 125%
Contrast the same room at the same ticket price in a full round:
tickets sold 300; money taken 30.00; guaranteed prize still 15.00; share paid out = 30.00 x 0.50 = 50%
Two rounds, one price, one promise: 125% of what was taken in the first and 50% in the second. The average of the two is 87.5%, and the average is what the ticket price was set against - not either round on its own.
What happens when two players finish on the same call
Two tickets can complete the pattern on the same number, and a room has to say what it does about it. There are three ordinary rules, and they are stated on the room's page.
- Split. The prize is divided between the winners, usually equally. A full house of 16.80 completed by two players is 8.40 each - the prizes are smaller and nothing is lost to the room.
- Rollover. The prize is not paid at all and is carried into the next round, where it is added to that round's prize. This produces the large single prizes rooms advertise, and it is funded by a round in which nobody was paid.
- Order of claim. The first valid claim takes the prize, which makes the claim window part of the prize rule rather than a technicality - the round page covers the seconds involved.
The rule matters to a player's expected value rather than only to fairness. Split and rollover move the same money differently: a split gives two players half each now, a rollover gives some future player all of it later. Neither is better in expectation, and they are not the same in variance, which is the subject of the numbers page.
The clause to look for on a room's page
look for
look for
floor The word guaranteed, and what it attaches to. A guaranteed full house, a guaranteed line and a guaranteed jackpot are three different promises, and the smallest of them is usually the one on the front of the room.
watch for
the catch A guarantee that depends on the round filling. Some rooms describe a prize as guaranteed and then state a minimum buy-in for the guarantee to apply. Where that sentence exists, the guarantee is conditional and the condition is the room's size.