Across Va., Bingo Calls Big Spenders to Pony Up

"It's a part-time job for me," said Jones, who often plays four nights a week and was already in for $200 on bingo sheets and pull-tab cards that evening. She tore the doors off a pull-tab card and won the money back in a single, lucky strike.

"It's the thrill," she said. "I just love to win."

Elsewhere in the hall, players with reserved seating had installed shrinelike arrangements of assorted curios and lucky knickknacks around their bingo stations -- plastic elephants, ceramic pigs, framed photos of children and spouses, among others. One woman wore a wrist brace on her dauber arm.

And yet, quirkiness aside, the game playing out in Annandale that night was a far cry from the typical church-basement bingo. Snazzy flat-panel monitors with a video link displayed the bingo balls as soon as the automated machine spit them up. Ticket vendors plied the room, selling stacks of pull-tab cards. And in case anybody wanted to push beyond their budget, the firehouse had its own ATM at the ready near the ticket counter.

"It's like any other business," Khemani said. "You have to keep the customers happy, or they'll go elsewhere."

The competition to attract new and younger players can be fierce, as many bingo operators work to break the image of the game as a slow, smoky bore. Marketing-savvy firemen now lease out touch-screen computer tablets, allowing customers to play 50, 60, even hundreds of bingo cards at once. And a flashy new prime-time show on ABC, "National Bingo Night," is a sign to some that the game is on the verge of a social revival.

"Bingo has been waiting to become the next Texas Hold 'Em in the American marketplace," said Mark Davis, chief executive of Bingo Innovations, an industry consulting firm and equipment distributor. "Corporate America has realized that there is a ravenous, addictive nature to the game and a very viable market for every type of commercial advertising."

Americans spend $10.1 billion a year on bingo games and supplies, according to Davis, of which $8.2 billion comes back in cash and prizes. Nearly $3 billion is spent at charitable outfits including the Annandale Fire House, which has paid out more than $14 million in winnings since 1993.

With all that cash flying around, it's no surprise that the game has developed a seedier side. Several high-profile embezzlement cases have been prosecuted in Virginia in recent years, including that of Kenneth E. Graham, a Richmond man convicted of stealing $690,000 from charity bingo games in Hanover County. Now a fugitive, he's been profiled on "America's Most Wanted."

Then there are compulsive bingo players who burn through thousands of dollars a month, often using the seemingly innocuous bingo setting as an excuse to overdose on pull-tab cards. "Many clients I've seen who are hooked on bingo are buying the pull-tabs," said Joanna Franklin, president of the Maryland Council on Problem Gambling.

One of Franklin's clients even developed a callous on her hand from popping open so many pull-tabs. The woman was soon on a path to ruin, first wagering her grocery money, then writing bad checks. She ultimately destroyed her marriage and became suicidal, Franklin said.

Bingo is a particularly appealing game to "escape gamblers" -- often women -- Franklin said. In contrast to "action" games, which are more popular with men and based on competition and deceiving or outsmarting opponents, bingo is "pressure-free."