Bingo, once the reserve of the housewife but now even more popular than ever amongst all ( legal to play ) age groups. They are constantly advertised in newspapers, on television and of course the Internet. So whats the " Extreme Deal " as i can hear some of you saying, " Theres nothing money saving about playing bingo ! " Well that's where you are wrong, seriously wrong. There are a mountain of bingo sites out there offering you the experience of online bingo whilst playing with their money, and as long as that's all you play with and DO NOT deposit any of your own, you could be laughing all the way to the bank.

I first took up the bingo challenge when i came across a site called www.thinkbingo.com who were offering a free £7.00 play which i gladly accepted. This was in January 2008 and i played the 10 pence games on the 75 ball type, buying 12 tickets, the sites are automated so theres no panic about missing any numbers, you can buy your tickets and go make a brew if you wished. During the course of the weekend, playing at various times i won a grand total of £102.96

In order to get your hands on the winnings you do have to register a debit card so that the payment facility can at least pay the money into somewhere, one other requirement is that nearly all of these sites insist on you depositing at least £10 to trigger the card, but as soon as you have deposited then you can instantly withdraw. I did all this and low and behold approximately 4 working days later the full £102.96 was sat resting in my bank account, Fantastic.

With the first experiment in online bingo a roaring success i moved onto www.mirrorbingo.com and followed the same process i have previously done on Think Bingo, but Mirror Bingo were more generous with a free £10.00 play. Over the next two days i again found success and eventually withdrew the grand amount of £52.02

Next came www.888ladies.com and no i didn't dress up as a lady like Vic Reeves does in the advertising campaign, I played their free £10.00 and walked away with £32.18 Recently, this being approx 2 months from my first bingo encounter i came across www.winkbingo.com and have to admit that this site is by far my favourite one at present as there is a 75 ball games that constantly runs at 5 pence per card, this really does maximise your chances of winning when combined with the most generous free amount of £15.00

I played the free money as i had previously done on the other 3 sites before it and walked away with £111.38, i still have £2.38 of free money to play with at the time of writing so maybe a few more pounds due there ? Whilst playing these sites i have noticed that when played very early in the morning and at about 9am - 9.15am seem to have been my most profitable times. I can only attribute this to the following, very early in the morning, well obvious reason there is most normal people are asleep and 9 am - 9.15 am i can only think that most people are in work at this time and the mums are out doing the school run and may not return home for 15 minutes thus not clogging up the game cards, who knows ?

Anyway my total winnings to date are as follows.....

THINK BINGO = £102.96
MIRROR BINGO = £52.02
888LADIES BINGO = £32.18
WINK BINGO = £111.38

GRAND TOTAL = 298.54

Please note i am NOT advocating everyone goes out and plays bingo, i offer this information based on my own recent experiences so if you do visit a bingo site please be sensible. The trick is to use the bingo sites free money and NEVER, EVER, EVER, play with your own money, when you do they have you and you may as well be stood on top of a mountain, because the only place you can go from there is downhill.

As ever, this post will be added to the MoneySavingExtreme website forum for open discussion.