How Do You Survive a Slump?

[00:00:04] It's not a game, it's a landstack. Hello, and welcome to The Broke Bingo Addict. This is a podcast that ventures through the wild and crazy world of bingo. This is much more than your grandmother's bingo. My name's Shari, and welcome to this week's episode, which as always is for entertainment purposes only. Hi, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of The Broke Bingo Addict.

[00:00:32] And I have to say, at this particular moment, that title couldn't be more appropriate. We are in a slump. We are in a freaking slump, and it's been going on for a while now. So I've had a couple of things come to mind while I'm going through this particular time in life. The first thing is that what do people do when they have a slump? And there's been two different thoughts, or at least two different thoughts that come to mind.

[00:00:59] The first one that I hear from people is just, you know, just hang in there, hang in there. It will come. Just, you know, everybody goes through it. If you just keep sticking to it, you're going to have your day, and you're going to start winning. You know, maybe have one of those days where you win four games in one day or something like that, or get like a really major, major win. So, you know, I actually tried that. I kept thinking, let's just keep going. It's got to turn around, you know, and there's always that fear of missing out.

[00:01:27] You fear if you don't go this one day, this could be the day when you're going to have a really, really big win. So you keep going. And you also have those thoughts where you see all these other people, and you say, well, you know, maybe I'm not spending enough. These other people seem to keep winning, and they win all the time, but they do spend more than you do. So maybe if you just up it a little more, you know, maybe if you spend a little bit more money on tabs or buy a couple extra sheets or a couple extra strips, maybe that'll turn

[00:01:55] your luck around, and you'll start winning some money and get out of this miserable little drought that you're in. You know, I actually did try doing that. I spent more money. I went more days. I mean, I was going like five days a week. That's still nothing. You know, I even go to the bingo club where you're playing like 75 games, all right? 75 games of bingo. I would get monitored. I would get set. I would get everything. But I just wasn't winning.

[00:02:25] And then I even had this one. You know, people sit there and say, part of the problem is you're not having positive thoughts. And it's really hard, though, to have positive thoughts when you're playing and playing and playing and you're not winning. But I was doing that. It's like, OK, let's think positive. I'm going to win. I'm going to win. I'm going to win. And you keep doing that. And then you can't do anything but start worrying. But what if you don't win? So that kind of messes up my mind. I don't know about anybody else.

[00:02:50] I start worrying about whether I'm not being positive enough in my thinking to win. And then that's hampering my ability to win. So there's kind of a little catch 22 in that. But anyway, so the other thought, instead of going constantly and trying to eventually have your luck turn around, the other thought is maybe you take a break, right? Maybe you sit out a few weeks of playing bingo. I have another friend who is getting ready for a wedding. And so she's been sitting some months out. I have another friend who's getting ready for a trip.

[00:03:20] So she's been taking some time off. But in all honesty, I really don't take any time off. I pretty much play at least one day a week and usually at least two days a week. So I, you know, it's like I think that's going to be hard for me to give bingo up completely because that's my joy. Anyway, I'm retired, so I don't have to go to work and I don't have many other outside activities other than bingo. Again, that's my joy. So it's going to be really difficult to just say, you know what? I'm not doing it.

[00:03:49] I'm going to stay home. I'm going to save some money because all that playing, all that trying to win has resulted in me spending a lot of money. So we're like, like I said, this is definitely the time when I can call myself the broke bingo addict. So we're going to take a break and we're going to sit back and we're not going to play bingo for a little while, but at the same time, I got to do something, right? You got to have some kind of connection to the bingo world. So I said, let me look into a couple of other options that are out there.

[00:04:17] Let's check in to see what other people do when they're not going to go play bingo. So the first one I thought of is just watching people play bingo. Okay. A lot of people watch people play bingo and I used to be one of those people who would go live and I had a lot of people watching me, which by the way is so much fun, but it can also be really, really very stressful because you want to play the game, but you also want to pay attention to the people who are following you and whatnot. But anyway, so I wasn't going to do that. I was going to be somebody who was watching somebody.

[00:04:47] And there are a lot of people out there who do go live that you can watch. Certainly know that Tanya goes live. Tanya, AKA the bingo addict or confessions of a bingo addict. There's Cash who goes live. There's Pressure who goes live. The Bay Area babes go live. So there's a lot of options out there. And actually recently who I had been watching on TikTok is my friend called M. Lucky. Now I used to watch M. Lucky play Keno all the time.

[00:05:12] And I got to tell you, it was a lot of fun, but very stressful because M. Lucky was a very, very big bet person. I don't know if, is that the right term? He was a very big gambler. Like I could see him just go through tons and tons of money that I would go, you know, but then he would turn around and win. So it was really exciting to watch him play Keno all the time. But now he's been playing bingo. And I've actually been trying to watch him play bingo for the last couple of days on TikTok.

[00:05:38] But the two times that I watched him recently, he ended up getting banana or his live got cut short. So I couldn't do that. I was going to watch some other people, but I'm thinking I should probably go over to YouTube if I'm going to watch somebody is go over to that and look at it. But for whatever reason, I have some kind of, I don't know, some kind of apprehension to being on YouTube. I'm going to have to get over that. I'm sure you guys are tired of me talking about that, but it will happen. So anyway, so that was an option to watch people play bingo on TikTok, which was fine.

[00:06:07] But I just didn't feel like I was really participating. So I thought I need to do something where I'm participating a bit more. So I started to go look at a couple other things. There's some bingo apps out there. I think one of the really popular bingo apps is called Bingo Blitz, right? We've all seen that. A lot of celebrities like Reese Witherspoon and some other people all campaign and advertise for Bingo Blitz. And I went on Bingo Blitz and it was too much. You know, some of these apps, I'm a little old lady.

[00:06:36] I get confused easily. So they have a lot of stuff going on with Bingo Blitz that I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't really understand it. It was just too many options, too many things. You can win this. There's extra things over here. There's this bonus. There's that bonus. So I really couldn't do that one. So I moved on and surprisingly, I did find another one. I found a little one that's called, I think it's just Blitz. It's like an app that has a variety of games that you can play.

[00:07:05] So if you want to play Bingo, you can play Bingo. If you want to do Solitaire, you can do Solitaire. Whatever. You could do a whole variety of different things. So I do Bingo, which is actually fun. But the funny thing is about that, while I've been playing that a lot recently and really getting into it and really enjoying it, I realized that I have the ability to keep earning like endless amounts of points. Let me explain. When I initially started playing this thing, you had so many points. Like it would give you free points or whatever.

[00:07:33] And you could play until you ran out of those points because each game you played cost you like 50 points. And they only gave you so many free points each day. And I kind of liked that. It was like the challenge to sit there and see how many free points that you could get. And then when it ran out, then that was just it and I'd have to go back because I'm one of those people. I don't know about anybody else. I don't pay for any of these things. If I've got to pay for it, then I'm not doing it. So, you know, I'm like a master on Candy Crush. I'm way up there. But I haven't paid less than $10 in all the years that I've ever played Candy Crush.

[00:08:03] So this game I was enjoying because I could get a certain amount of play every day until I ran out of points. But then recently I realized they have this little button that you could do. And I don't know if that's always been there and I just didn't realize it until recently. But if you click on that little button when certain things pop up, then that gives you the opportunity to earn more points. And it's gotten to a place where I've gained so many points.

[00:08:29] I've got like 6,000 points and you only have to use 50 points per game. So for whatever reason, that might sound counterintuitive, but I don't like the game as much because I can win so easily. So it's not much of a challenge anymore. So as silly as that might seem, I don't really care for that game much anymore. So I decided let me move on to something else. And I decided to go check out some of the bingo apps where you actually get to play with the real person,

[00:08:57] where you can actually win a little bit of money. And the first one that I wanted to go look at was something called Live Play Bingo. And I honestly think all of you people should be very aware of Live Play Bingo because that used to be everywhere. I mean, I don't know if you recall, but when I started going on TikTok and doing these things, and so many people were going live all the time. This is before everybody was getting, you know, shut down or bananated, if you want to call it that,

[00:09:26] when it was like really, really active. Everybody was on there and everybody had sponsorships or collaborations, if you want, with Live Play Bingo. I mean, everybody would go on there. I think particularly I remember doing a bingo fairy and she was like, you know, just click on this and watch me live on Live Play Bingo. Follow us. And, you know, again, Tanya, the bingo addict, I'm pretty sure Cash did too.

[00:09:52] I don't want to swear to it, but so many people were connected to Live Play Bingo, myself included. They actually reached out to me one time, but I'm very bad about checking my email and I got back to it too late. So I didn't get the opportunity. But it was everywhere to the point where they actually were sponsors on Wheel of Fortune, which I watch all the time with my mother. So I was like so tickled that there would always be these commercials or advertisements for Live Play Bingo.

[00:10:17] But I realized when I was thinking about going to it and checking it out, because I actually never had, I haven't seen that anymore. I don't see anybody advertising or anybody say, join me. So, again, I don't know if that's just a TikTok thing. Maybe they're doing it on YouTube. Again, I will get to it. But I just think it's so weird that it was so prevalent at one time and now it's practically non-existent. And I say non-existent just on TikTok because it is still out there. It's still available.

[00:10:46] You still can go use it. And I did. I went, I looked on there. I checked it out. And similar to some of the other bingo apps, it's just too much for me. There's so much going on. There's this. You can earn this. There's this ball. There's that. There's this. There's just so many ways to get things instead of just playing, boom, you get on and you play bingo. So that was really, really confusing for me. So I never did it. I said, okay, let me find something else. And I found something called Live Q Bingo.

[00:11:14] And I like it. I like it a lot. I have no idea why it's called Live Q. I might have to ask that time. But I think it's really a nice little app because it's simple. It's very simple. When you go on, they have games at night. I think they have like three or four games at night. Looks like they're starting at 6 p.m. Pacific time. What is that? 9 Eastern, 8 Central.

[00:11:39] Anyway, they have simple little games where when you go on, you get six bingo cards, okay? So they have a total of 90 numbers that they use, right? There's 90 numbers. They only use each number one time. So of those six bingo cards that you have, you're trying to get a total of 15 numbers, right? They all have 15 numbers on them. And what they generally play is a coverall. I had played one time before and they didn't do a coverall.

[00:12:08] But it seems like right now what they're generally playing is a coverall. And the basic game pays $25, okay? So $25 when you're not paying really anything to play is a, you know, it's nice. It's fun. You're talking to a person. They have an actual live person who's calling the numbers. And they have a progressive jackpot. They have a money box is what it's called. And that goes up $5 every day until it's won, which is interestingly enough, just to kind of cut back, they actually won that last night.

[00:12:37] So the person who won it ended up getting $220. So that was fun to see. They also have hot balls. I'm not quite sure what you get for the hot balls. I forgot, to be honest. But they have three hot balls and they change those three hot balls every month. So if you went on a hot ball, obviously you get something. My bad because I don't remember what it was. They have something called easy play. Okay, I will tell you this is really, really important.

[00:13:00] Easy play is really, really important because the first time I tried this, what happens is, like I mentioned, you do have those six bingo cards. But they're small. Remember, you're playing on a small screen, generally speaking. And so what happens is she calls the number. You've got to find that number because it's only once, right? You've got to scroll across those six cards and find that number. And the first time I was playing this, I didn't do the easy play, which I'll explain more again.

[00:13:28] But it was just really hard. It was too hard to try to scroll across and try to find a number and keep up with the numbers that are being called. So basically, if you pay a dollar, you get the easy play. And what it does is on your phone or on your tablet, whatever it was, whatever they call the bingo number, then that number scrolls across or that bingo card will show up. It'll move over to the bingo card that has that number on it. So you can find it easily and just tap it. Okay?

[00:13:54] So that's one of the main benefits of that easy play because, like I said, that first time I was scrolling back and forth, scrolling back and forth, really trying to keep up with the numbers that are being called. But the other thing that the easy play does for you is if, for some reason, you think you have a number and you click on it more than three times, it's going to lock you out. So you can't do anything for like 40 seconds, which is really going to slow you up because it's hard to keep up with those numbers as they're coming. Not that they're calling them particularly fast.

[00:14:23] But again, it's like you do have a limited amount of time. And if you don't have the easy play, then you've got to take that time scrolling and then trying to scroll back to the other one. It's just kind of exhausting. So that's nice that it won't lock you out if you do the easy play. And also with the easy play, it gives you the option to see the numbers on the screen. Like if you've missed a number, if you're not sure about a number, you can use your easy play ability to scroll up or down on the list of numbers that they have that have already been called. So it's really nice. It's only a dollar.

[00:14:51] And actually, if you buy a bunch of them, you can reduce the cost on that. I think if you get like three, it goes down to like 275 or something like that. So it's a nice little benefit. I really, really appreciate the ability to have that option. So again, it was really nice. I like it because people are chatting. And again, it's not that they weren't chatting on live play bingo, but this one just seemed a little easier to follow. The hostess was really nice. And if you have any kind of a question, then they obviously will answer it for you.

[00:15:22] The main thing that they have that I like that I didn't really see on the other ones is they actually have a video telling you how their stuff works. So I watched that a couple of times to say, okay, this is what I need to do. It's pretty simple. It's not very complicated at all. But it was nice that they had the video to say, okay, do this, do this. And at a certain point, if you have the bingo, then you click the little icon that will pop up and say bingo and you claim it and everything. So it was nice. It seemed like it was a very fun little community that they've all kind of chatted with each other.

[00:15:50] I'm not quick enough to do as much chatting as the other ones do. So between watching the bingo and typing it in, I didn't do as much chatting. But it was just really, really fun and easy. They have games Monday through Thursday. They have the live person games. But they also have these mini games that you can play actually throughout the day. I think they only pay like $2. But it seemed like something that you could do whenever you wanted to. To be honest, I haven't done that yet. I actually might try that today.

[00:16:15] But I'm just saying, since I'm kind of going to be out here on my own, not playing bingo, not chasing the dragon, as they would say, I'm going to have something that I could do that's going to kind of soothe my itch for a little bit. And I'm just wondering, what do you guys do if that happens to you? Do you think it's better to keep chasing the ball or is it better to take a break, let things calm down, and then go back and see if you can have the ability to, you know, win some big money.

[00:16:46] Anyway, thanks so much for listening. That's it for this week's episode of the broke, very, very broke bingo addict. Hope you come back and listen to the next one. Thanks so much. Bye.