A bingo dauber is one of the indispensable accoutrements used to play bingo games. Every bingo game at a land-based venue requires bingo cards, bingo numbers, and bingo daubers. These resources are essential when playing live bingo games with friends, family, and colleagues. Many bingo players call bingo daubers by other names such as bingo markers, bingo dabbers, bingo dobbers, or even bingo blotters. They all refer to the same thing – an ink-based pen that marks off winning bingo numbers on your bingo tickets.
In a traditional 75 ball bingo game, or perhaps a 90 ball bingo game, the bingo caller will announce randomly selected bingo numbers. As soon as each number has been called, players use their bingo dauber to blot the corresponding number on the bingo card, or bingo cards. If you’re playing with more than one bingo card, you will need to act quickly between bingo calls to mark off all the corresponding numbers. These bingo daubers are available in many different colours, shapes, and sizes.
Bingo parlours a.k.a. bingo halls typically sell bingo daubers along with bingo tickets. Many players prefer a specific colour bingo dauber, and there are many options to choose from. For example, there are blue, red, turquoise, orange, green, purple, cherry, and yellow bingo daubers to choose from – a rainbow of colours is available. As a player at a land-based bingo hall, you can bring your own bingo daubers with you to games, or you can buy them at the venue – it’s your call.
How Much Does a Bingo Dauber Cost?
Bingo games are designed to be cost-effective entertainment options. There is no point spending too much money on bingo daubers, since you can get them really cheap. Bulk buy options offer the best prices for bingo daubers. Whether you are looking to buy for a bingo hall, or as a bingo player, you can buy bingo daubers affordably. Single bingo dabbers can cost around $0.79, or GBP equivalent, or you can go really upscale and pay around £5 per bingo dauber, but those are the really upscale versions. Expensive bingo daubers include fancy bottles and tops, as well as neon glitter, and quick-drying ink.
Royal Bingo Supplies Bingo Daubers – a retailer sells a pack of 10 daubers for £50 – that’s on the high end. You can just as easily get Fluorescent Ink Slimline Bingo Daubers packs of 48 for £27. As a rule, you can expect to pay anywhere from £0.50 – £1.00 for individual bingo daubers on average. These dabbers come in different sizes. Some of them are 15 mL, others are 45 mL. Depending on how often you play bingo, you obviously want to maximise the amount of ink in each dauber and minimise the cost accordingly. Bank on half a quid for each bingo dauber. Many bingo halls sell bingo daubers for a premium. For this reason, you may want to buy them online and bring them with you to the bingo room.
What’s the Best Way to Use a Bingo Dauber?
Believe it or not, it’s incredibly easy to learn how to use a bingo dauber. These
markers usually have a sponge-like flathead which acts like a stamp with a specific colour of ink in the bingo dauber. If you are using a green bingo dauber, the ink marks called bingo numbers in green. It doesn’t matter which hand you use – you don’t need to be ambidextrous to use a bingo dauber. It’s not like a pen; it’s simply a marker used to indicate which bingo numbers you have already matched on your bingo tickets. Bingo daubers have a much wider girth than regular pens, since they’re filled with lots of ink, and are designed to blot out numbers on your tickets.
First things first. Lay out your bingo tickets on the table in front of you. You should have an unobstructed view of all your paper bingo tickets. If you were playing online bingo, you could use autodaub functionality to automatically mark all the called bingo numbers on all of your cards simultaneously. In land-based bingo games, you need to do this manually. It’s not a chore; it’s lots of fun. With your bingo cards neatly laid out, all you have to do is unscrew the top to your bingo dauber and wait for numbers to be called. Whether it’s a computerised RNG (Random Number Generator), or a bingo basket and a bingo caller, the dauber is used the same way.
Consider the following example with a standard 75 ball bingo card.
If the bingo caller announces the following numbers in succession: 8, 1, 22, 58, 61, 74, you will have a diagonal after using your bingo dauber to mark the corresponding numbers. Take a look at the bingo card for what to expect.
Bingo daubers really are indispensable, since they are much more useful than circular discs, or pieces of candy used to mark winning bingo numbers. With a dauber, you can clearly see which numbers have been called, and how close you are to forming winning combinations. It’s always a good idea to double check every number that you daub ahead of time. Once you daub a number on a paper bingo card, you cannot un-daub it (unless you’re using laminated bingo cards with dry erase markers).
Bingo Ticket Structure Makes It Easy to Quickly Mark Bingo Cards
It works much the same with a 90 ball bingo card. Recall that these bingo cards feature 3 rows, and 9 columns. There are 5 numbers in each row along with 4 blank spaces. 90 ball bingo cards come in strips of 6 at all online bingo rooms. This is the industry standard. In other words, a single bingo ticket contains 6 bingo cards. If you’re using a bingo dauber to mark off your tickets, there are techniques that you can use to speed things up as well. Take a look at each column from left to right.
In 90 ball bingo, the columns from left to right contain sets of numbers. On the leftmost column, the numbers 1-10 will be displayed. Next, it’s 11-20, followed by 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80, and 81-90 in the rightmost column. If a certain number is called, find it in its appropriate column and then scan all the way down your bingo cards for the same number.
That way you don’t have to look at 15 numbers on every single bingo card, you can simply stay in the same vertical line and mark off all the identical numbers per bingo call. As an example, if the number 3 is called, look in the first column from the left and mark all ‘3’ numbers appearing in the first column. It’s much quicker than scanning each bingo card in its entirety, and potentially missing a valuable number that has been called.
With 75 ball bingo games, a similar concept is at play. There are 5 rows, and 5 columns. The columns contain the following letters: B-I-N-G-O. In every B column, you will notice the following numbers: 1-15. In every I column, the numbers 16-30 form. In N, it’s 31-45, in G it’s numbers 46-60, and in O it’s 61-75. Along similar lines, you simply scan with your bingo dauber from the top of the column down. If you have individual 5 x 5 bingo cards, place them in such a way that vertical scanning is easy. Use your dauber to mark off the same numbers on each of the bingo cards.
Summary of Bingo Daubers
- A bingo dauber is a highlighter, marker, or fluorescent ink marker used to mark off all called bingo numbers on bingo cards.
- Bingo daubers go by many different names including bingo dabbers, and bingo dobbers. But they all refer to the same thing – a pen-like device used to mark off numbers on your bingo cards.
- Bingo daubers are relatively inexpensive, costing between £0.50 and £5 each, depending on how fancy they are. It’s better to buy your own bingo daubers and bring them with you to the bingo games, since you can buy in bulk and save.
- Bingo dabbers come in many different colours, including purple, turquoise, pink, green, mauve, cyan, violet, orange, blue, yellow, and red. Your choice of colour does not affect the game outcome in any way.
- You can make it much easier to daub your bingo numbers by following the structure of your bingo cards. In 75 ball bingo, there are set number combinations for B-I-N-G-O columns. In 90 ball bingo, each column represents 10 numbers. Use this format to quickly mark off the same bingo numbers across multiple cards.
