Best Las Vegas Bingo Halls

Best Las Vegas Bingo

The best overall Bingo Room in Las Vegas is Red Rock due to its large modern facility, competitive prizes, completely separate smoking and non-smoking sections (joined only by the smaller Silver Nugget) and as being part of the outstanding Red Rock casino.

For around the clock bingo, if you don’t mind a mixed smoking/non-smoking format, Arizona Charlie’s Boulder and Decatur are recommended with the Boulder (eastside) location slightly preferred. 

For a small bingo game clearly separated into smoking and non-smoking, the Silver Nugget in North Las Vegas would be your choice especially since the Jerry’s Nugget parlor ihas closed.

Downtown, the Plaza is the last remaining Bingo Room. On the Strip, the end of the New Frontier means that a cab ride to Gold Coast (most bingo seats in Las Vegas) is your best bet. If you are playing Bingo with a large group of friends it is our top recommendation.  There is no bingo on the main Strip.

Las Vegas Bingo Overview

There are about 8,797 total Bingo seats in 20 casinos. Of these seats, about 3,454 are Smoking and 5,343 are non-Smoking. The total square footage for Las Vegas Bingo is almost 169,000 square feet

If you play Bingo with a group of friends and need lots of seats to insure sitting together, try the Gold Coast, especially for their 9 am session. If you like small rooms, Terribles and Silver Nugget have less than 160 seats. Red Rock would be the choice if you like big rooms with South Point another large room to consider.

In terms of seats, the Gold Coast has the most with 160 Smoking and 560 non-Smoking seats—720 total. Terrible’s is the smallest room by seats at roughly 130. Red Rock is the most spacious Bingo Room at 18,278 square feet while the Plaza is the most compact at 2,940 square feet.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board tracks win rates (Hold %) which consistently show the smallest margin for casinos is Bingo. The Hold % is not the same thing as the Casino Edge or theoretical advantage. Also, we do not consider Bingo to be a Table Game while the Board does. Please click here to see details on how our definitions differ from the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

On average, the Hold for the casino Table Games is 12.79% with Caribbean Stud and Keno especially profitable. The lowest is for Bingo at less than 1% for the most recent 12 month period. Non-restricted is 15 machines or more.

Source: State of Nevada Gaming Control Board, Gaming Revenue Report 6/1/06 to 5/31/07, Page 6

Bingo is provided almost at cost by casinos with a Hold of under 1 percent compared to total table games of 12.79%. Sessions are held every other hour on the odd hours except for the Cannery which is on every other even hour. Sessions last about an hour leaving plenty of time for patrons to hit the slot machines in between Bingo sessions.

Jackpots

Prizes vary from room to room and session to session but Station Casino’s have linked progressives for their Bingo Halls with a $50,000 first place plus consolation prizes for all other players. This means that a prize of $101K will have $51K available to other participants and $50K for the jackpot winner. Recently, Cannery, South Point and Arizona Charlie’s have had jackpots over $60,000.

Almost all Bingo Rooms have a Cashball type of game where validated cards win when a particular number is the Bingo number. Validation is normally $2 a card but sometimes there are specials. Silver Nugget is a bit expensive at $3 and Arizona Charlie’s Boulder is less expensive at $1 to validate. Cashballs vary from session to session with some sessions at around a few hundred up to several thousand dollars.

Smoking/Non-Smoking Bingo Rooms

At some casinos, a smoker could sit very close to a non-smoker. The Sun Coast has a typical Las Vegas configuration where smokers have their set of tables across the room from non-smokers but some tables are not very far from each other. Red Rock uses glass enclosures to completely separate smoking and non-smoking Bingo players with Silver Nugget also getting more separation than most Bingo Rooms.

Bingo Electronics

If beeping annoys you or you are a very traditional dauber type of player, you may like the Fiesta Henderson which is all paper. Every other Bingo Room in Las Vegas has both portable and stationary electronic units.

Should daubing all 30 cards you are playing simultaneously be an issue, the electronics will “mark” the cards for you. TV reception on the stationary units is usually acceptable but screens are small. Portable Color Bingo electronics in Las Vegas is almost always $2 ($1 more for the stationary units) but Arizona Charlie’s Boulder is $1 to rent.

Bingo Tips

Even though casinos make very little money on Bingo, the average player will still be “one away” from the big prize or else sharing a small jackpot with several other players. There are some ways to improve your chances.

Bingo Rooms are less crowded early in the morning and in bad weather. If there are gusting winds, pouring rain, or very high heat, attendance can be light. At the Gold Coast, one of their 9 am sessions during high heat in June 2007 had less than 50 players for a room that can hold 720.

Arizona Charlie’s is very popular because they have sessions around the clock, reasonable prices and good cheap food. However, at the 3:00 am sessions, they will often have 50 or fewer players.

The opposite strategy is to play at the Station Casinos such as Red Rock and hope somebody, anybody hits the big one and you get to split the rest of the money as well as get free slot play.

However, the most important tip is to avoid the slot machines while you are in between Bingo sessions. Even if you are in the Boulder Strip, the house Edge on slot machines is over 5% which is very high compared to Bingo.