Sun Bingo’s guide to the difference between online bingo, slots and slingos
SUN BINGO is one of the biggest online bingo sites. However, we don’t just dabble with dabbers, we’ve also got slots and slingos.
Most of the major online bingo sites will offer a variety of game options.
That can include casino games, slingos, slots and scratch cards.
Lots of players like to play a range of games. If you’re new to online bingo, you might not be aware of the key differences between them.
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Knowing what the gaming formats are like can help you decide which you’d like to try playing.
Three of the main options on gaming sites like Sun Bingo and Fabulous Bingo are online bingo, slot games and slingos.
We’ve put together an ultimate guide about these three gaming options.
Here’s all you need to know online bingo, slot games and slingos, and how they differ.
Online bingo
You can find online bingo at Sun Bingo and Fabulous Bingo. However, Sun Vegas does not have bingo.
If you’ve joined Sun Bingo, it’s probably because you like, or at least want to try, playing online bingo.
Playing bingo online is quickly becoming a very popular option among bingo players.
The games are just like those played in traditional halls, but with all of the conveniences of being online.
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Most sites, Sun Bingo included, offer a wide range of virtual bingo rooms for you to play in.
Choosing the right room for you is a matter of knowing what kind of bingo you’d like to play.
It’s worth checking out the virtual lobby of the bingo site, which should list all of the rooms and how to play the games hosted in those rooms.
You’ll recognise most of the games, they’ll be 50 ball, 75 ball, 80 ball or 90 ball.
However, the advantage of online bingo rather than playing bingo in a hall is that there can be more variety in the games hosted on the Internet.
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For instance, Sun Bingo has exclusive rooms that use symbols rather than numbers, such as in the Mystic Meg Bingo Room. The Brit 50 Bingo Room utilises iconic UK landmarks.
Meanwhile, rooms such as Rainbow Riches and Age of the Gods have additional bonus features that play out during the games, which allow players to potentially win extra prizes.
Unique features of online bingo
A feature that’s unique to online bingo that you can’t get when playing slots or slingos is that you can prebuy tickets for upcoming games.
On Sun Bingo, you select the “Prebuy” option in the bingo lobby.
Once you’ve done that, you pick the room, day and time of the game for which you’d like to prebuy tickets.
The screen will display the room schedule, which includes:
- Game name
- Bonus features
- Ticket price
- Minimum prize pot
- Number of tickets you can buy
You select how many tickets you want and can purchase them.
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Another unique element to online bingo is Session Bingo. This is slightly different to normal games of online bingo.
With Session Bingo, you pay one lump sum and that buys you a bundle of tickets for several games.
At Sun Bingo, are Session plays out in the Oasis Room. Players can pay £3 and get 12 tickets for 12 consecutive games (144 tickets in total).
Given that community is at the core of bingo culture, it’s important that online bingo sites try to incorporate that element into their platforms.
Sun Bingo has a number of chat rooms; some are specifically linked to certain rooms, while others are for general chit chat and gossip!
The chat rooms are tied to the online bingo games. You don’t get chat rooms with slots or slingos.
How to play online bingo
Online bingo games generally play out in under five minutes. The shorter games, such as 50-ball games, can be even faster.
You’ll select how many tickets you’d like to buy, with some restrictions on minimum and maximum ticket numbers, depending on the game.
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The majority of online bingo games are auto dabbed. This is because you can buy lots of tickets per game. In some games, you can buy up to 120 tickets.
Even a skilled bingo-loving octopus would struggle to have enough dabbers to keep tabs on all of those tickets!
Once you have your tickets and the game starts, the auto dabbing will keep your tickets updated as the game progresses.
Depending on the room and ball count of the game you’re playing in, there might be multiple prizes during the game.
For instance, in the Glamour Room, players win cash prizes if they are the first to complete one line (1L), two lines (2L), three lines (3L), four lines (4L) or get the almighty full house.
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Once the online bingo game that you’ve played in has finished, you’ll have to buy more tickets to play in further games.
If you want to keep playing in the same room, you can purchase tickets from within the room.
Otherwise, you’ll have to return to the lobby and select the room you’d like to play in next.
How to win in online bingo
Aside from the main game prizes (the 1L, 2L, 3L, 4L and full house), another way to win in online bingo is by triggering the room’s jackpot.
Most of the rooms have an exclusive jackpot that is linked to the games that play out in that room.
The jackpot is a separate pot of money that is independent of the cash pot for the main prizes.
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The jackpot is triggered when the full house is won within a certain number of ball calls (which varies from room to room and sometimes between specific games).
When activated, the jackpot is awarded according to one of the following options:
- Solely to the full house winner(s).
- Jointly to the full house winner(s) and the community (that means all of the players with valid tickets for the game within which the jackpot is triggered).
- Solely to the community.
Although generally bingo prizes are cash, sometimes bingo sites will run special games where the prizes are tangible goods or holidays.
Recently, Sun Bingo ran All Star bingo games where the full house prize was tickets to a weekend in Blackpool, hosted by Sun Bingo.
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We’ve also awarded a huge range of goodies from clothes to jewellery, tech bundles to Easter chocolate hampers.
Individual online bingo games may have bonus features enabled that allow the players more chances to win prizes. These features include:
- 1TG – One To Go – Any player that has only one number left on their ticket when the full house is called will also win a cash prize.
- 2TG – Two To Go – Any player that has two numbers left on their ticket when the full house is called will also win a cash prize.
- Roll On – The game doesn’t stop when the full house is called! Instead, the balls will keep being drawn until there are multiple full house winners.
Many of the rooms have bonus features that are unique to that specific online bingo room.
Slots
Slot games are available across all of The Sun's gaming platforms: Sun Bingo, Fabulous Bingo and Sun Vegas.
While slot games are very different to online bingo, that doesn’t mean they are any less fun or have less chances for you to win money.
Most online bingo platforms will also offer players the chance to enjoy slot games.
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These are usually housed in a different part of the site, separate to the online bingo area.
On Sun Bingo, you can move across the different areas of the site using the top navigation bar. The options include:
- Bingo
- Slots
- Casino
- Slingo & Scratch
So, if you want to try out the slots, you’d select the second option.
Generally, sites will have lots more slot options than bingo room options.
At Sun Bingo, while there are approximately 20 bingo rooms to choose from, there are 100s of slot games.
So, there’s a lot more variety to pick from when it comes to slots.
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If you aren’t sure where to start, Sun Bingo organises lots of the slots into themed carousel to give you an idea of the kind of games on offer. These carousels include:
- New
- Featured
- Megaways
- Jackpots
- Seasonal – This carousel is updated depending on what calendar event is approaching, such as St Patrick’s Day, Easter, Halloween or Christmas.
You can also search for individual slot games using the search engine to the left-hand side of the screen (the button with a magnifying glass icon).
How to play slot games
Individual slot games can operate differently. However, the average slot game will run as follows.
Click on the icon of the slot game that you’d like to play. This will load the game, potentially asking you to click “start” to confirm that you’d like to play that slot.
Unlike online bingo where games will have set ticket prices per game, in a slot game you can choose your stake value.
This can be adjusted between the minimum and maximum bets allowed for that specific slot game.
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One game on a slot machine is significantly shorter than one game of online bingo.
While the bingo game may take five minutes, one turn on a slot machine can be over in mere seconds.
That’s because you pay per spin, and that spin is completed at lightning speed.
If you don’t spin in a winning combination of symbols, your game ends. You’ll have to bet another sum of money in order to play again.
However, your game may take longer if you spin in a winning combination (and the system calculates how much you have won) or if your spin results in a bonus feature being triggered.
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Slot games can have additional play features that affect the odds of the game.
This can include an option to pick the volatility of your game. For instance, picking level one means an increased win ratio but the winnings are lower.
Level two is a middle ground of routine wins of slightly larger values. Level three is higher wins but at more sporadic rate.
You might also get the chance to “double or nothing”, when winnings from a spin can be gambled for the chance to double them.
How to win on a slot game
You win money on a slot game by spinning in a pattern of symbols that correlates with one of the paylines for that game.
The number of paylines available varies between different games.
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Generally, they will have at least 10 paylines. Sometimes, they can have as many as 50 or more.
Nearly every slot is different when it comes to the bonus features, as they are often unique to that game.
Generally speaking, the major bonus features that a game will have include free spins or bonus rounds.
If you trigger free spins that means you have the chance to spin again without paying.
The rules of the specific slot game you’re playing will explain how that works.
This is a feature you’ll see in slots and slingos but not in online bingo games.
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The bonus games vary hugely. Prizes can include:
- Cash
- Free spins
- Multipliers – your winnings are all multiplied by a certain number to increase your winnings pot
While the rules of a slot’s base game are fairly simple, the rules of individual slot games can get a little complex if they have lots of bonus rounds or features.
Players aren’t expected to know the rules off by heart; all additional features are triggered and explained by Sun Bingo as you play.
In terms of the cash prizes available, slot games vary much more than online bingo.
In a game of online bingo, generally, there is a set cash pot and the only variation will occur if there are multiple winners of the same prize (e.g. two people win the full house).
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There are some bingo games that allow you to pick how much you pay for your ticket, and this will impact the total cash prize available.
However, these are exceptions to the usual practice of having a set amount in the winnings pot.
Meanwhile, slot games are very different. All of the cash prizes are based on a multiple of your base stake.
So, what you win will be linked to how much you payed to play. The more you stake, the more money you can win.
Jackpots
Much like online bingo games, often slot games will have jackpots.
Yet, how they are triggered is totally different. In bingo, a jackpot will only be activated in very specific circumstances (involving the number of balls taken to achieve the full house).
On the other hand, the jackpots in slot games can often be triggered randomly on any game of any stake value.
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Again, this can vary between the different games, some slot games have jackpots that can only be won within triggered bonus games.
Also, while a bingo room will usually only have one jackpot, often a slot game can have multiple jackpots.
These pots often increase in size from a smaller pot through to a large pot.
Another key difference between online bingo jackpots and those of slot games is that while the former is either a set value or progressive (incrementally increasing with each game until it is won), the jackpot amount in a slot game is often linked to the base stake.
The more you pay to play, the larger the pot size you can win if you get a jackpot.
As you can see, when it comes to playing slots, there is greater variety of game choice and rules than in online bingo.
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A slot’s game play can be more exciting, but also far less predictable than online bingo, which has a much more consistent format.
Slingos
The newest kid on the block when it comes to games on online bingo sites is slingo.
On the Sun Bingo site, the slingos can be found under “Slingo & Scratch”. They can also be searched for using the search bar.
Like the name suggests, slingo is a mashup of slots and bingo.
It takes the speed and “spin” feature of slots, and combines it with the game format of bingo.
This hybrid brings together the best parts of slot machines and bingo.
How to play slingo games
You can find slingos on Sun Bingo, Fabulous Bingo and Sun Vegas.
As with slots, there are lots of slingo games on offer. There’s also some variation in how they work. However, they all follow the same general rules.
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Slingos take their pricing strategy from slots. Players can pick a price within a range to pay, and that will impact how much they can win.
However, unlike with a slot where that price buys you one spin, with a slingo that buys you a number of spins (usually around 10 spins).
With multiple spins, it can feel like your stake is going further and you have more chances to win.
With each spin, five numbers (or symbols) are spun in. If any of those match with the numbers or symbols on your ticket, it gets dabbed off (that’s the bingo influence).
When you complete whole diagonal, horizontal or vertical rows, you form a slingo.
Each slingo moves you up the pay ladder, which will be shown to the left-hand side of the screen.
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Not all of the slingo games are auto spun. Some require you to click “spin” for each of your designated turns.
The slingo format means that games take longer than an average slot game.
Also, while slot game winnings can start instantly, it’s often the case in a slingo game that you have to achieve a certain number of competed slingos before you start to win prizes.
The average slingo game may require three to five slingos before you can start winning cash.
The prizes, often cash, increase the higher up the pay table that you climb. This accumulates with you achieving a full house.
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While the main game format is like bingo, there are some elements of a slot game as well.
For instance, with each spin you can spin in extras, such as:
- Extra spin – This gives you an additional spin after your base number have been used.
- Block – This means you cannot dab any numbers in that reel for that turn (this is unique to the slingo format).
- Wild / Joker – This allows you to pick a number from that reel to dab off (unique to the slingo format).
- Super Wild / Super Joker – This allows you to pick any number from the entire ticket to dab off (incredibly useful for completing slingos, and unique to this format).
With that in mind, if you get a Wild, always use it to try and complete a row, column or diagonal.
Central numbers can be good options if you’re not yet close to getting a slingo, as they can help you get diagonal slingos.
Additional features
Unlike online bingo or slots, slingos usually don’t have jackpots.
However, they do have other additional features that can give the player extra ways to win.
Some slingo games offer instant cash prizes if you spin in three or more of the same symbol on the same turn.
As with slots, there are lots of extra and unique features that individual slingos employ to distinguish themselves. For instance, some have a “cascade” feature.
This means that after a row is complete, it will disappear and be replaced by new numbers and the game will spin again (but this won’t count as another of your allotted spins), if another slingo is completed, the cascade feature will be triggered again.
This continues until no new slingos are formed.
Another feature that is unique to the slingo format is the notion of buying extra spins.
This can be useful if at the end of your allotted spins, you were close to completing slingos.
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The game will often allow you to buy extra spins, one at a time, up to a certain limit.
However, the cost of these extra spins will increase, depending on the likelihood of you completing a slingo as well as how many slingos that means you will have achieved.
Lots of slingos offer bonus rounds or free spin prizes if you get high up the pay table.
Are you gonna bingo? Slot game? Slingo?
There are some crucial differences between online bingo, slot games and slingos that you should know about before deciding which game format is best for you.
Of course, you might like the sound of all of them and give each one a go, if that’s within your budget.
These games do also share similarities.
They’re all fun, fairly quick and can award amazing cash prizes. Try out online bingo, slot games and slingos on Sun Bingo today, see what you can win.
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Remember to gamble responsibly
A responsible gambler is someone who:
- Establishes time and monetary limits before playing
- Only gambles with money they can afford to lose
- Never chase their losses
- Doesn’t gamble if they’re upset, angry or depressed
- Gamcare –
- Gamble Aware –
For help with a gambling problem, call the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 or go to to be excluded from all UK-regulated gambling websites.