MORE BINGO FOR MINNESOTA

The world of bingo has faced a great deal of turbulence lately with the advent of online bingo and the ever increasing manner of ways in which bingo lovers are able to play the game – one thing is for certain during this ever changing climate. Some people really love playing bingo in person, with human interaction and a bingo chip in their hand.

Does this sound like a crime to you? Well, to some, playing bingo more than twice a week WAS a crime. It was in fact illegal to play bingo more than twice a week in a nursing home or senior centre until the Minnesota Gambling Control board finally changed their tune and changed the law to permit residents to play more than twice a week.

When you think about the principles of this law…you actually begin to wonder if there were any principles in the first place. Restricting something to twice a week would in no way have a positive effect on the amount of money being spent on the game, or any level of addiction being developed towards it. Enjoy doing something every day? You can become addicted to it. Enjoy doing something twice a week? You can crave it on the days you’re not allowed access to it and still develop an addiction that you can only satiate on those days you DO get access. In a nutshell. Addiction can take place either way.

Perhaps the restriction was designed to cage the amount of money being spent on bingo, but again, how would restricting the amount of days people are allowed to play ever have a direct effect on the amount of money being spent on bingo when people played it? If you play every day, you can spend little and often. If you play twice per week, you can spend that same amount within a shorter time frame, and if anything, it would probably serve to induce “binge” gambling and a surge in the amount one spent when they were allowed to play.

These are of course only theories, but the Gambling board must have found some truth in them in order to have removed the two day ban – the fact of the matter is that there was little point in keeping the law in place, an that’s something many people obviously saw eye to eye on.

Further to this, the target audience for “in person” bingo is very likely to be dominated by the older generation, and it was they, the people who had helped establish such an immensely popular past time in the first place, who really suffered from this law in what was seen by some as an unfair and largely unfounded act of control.

The removal of the law is an enormous victory for many, who have simply wanted to enjoy their favourite pas time on a more regular basis with their close friends and acquaintances – and why shouldn’t they? Well…the reasons why, whatever the Minnesota Gambling Boards were in the first place, seem to hold no further importance in the face of a world that is becoming more open minded about subjects that were once, perhaps wrongly, seen as taboo.