Seeing as I am snowed-in and have nowhere else to go, I thought I may as well take a little look back on 2009 and see what we’ve been up to on FreeBingo this past year.

JANUARY 2009 saw the introduction of the Diamond Room. The Gold Room had proven so popular, that a second high roller room was much in demand to allow more players the opportunity to win some larger than average jackpots.

It has since become a permanent fixture on the FreeBingo games page. It was also a great month for me as I celebrated passing my driving test!

We also ran a ‘January Sales’ promo, with half-price tickets, which is something we are going to do again this year, starting from next week.

FEBUARY was a month of love as in time honoured tradition we re-opened our Valentines Room. This lovely design was one of the very first themed rooms we ever did, and we bring it out every year. In 2009 we spiced it up a bit with guaranteed jackpots on Valentines Night for all those who weren’t out on a hot date! We also found a venue for my wedding, which takes place later this year! OMG!

After Valentines Day we brought back the Music Room. This particular room is really great fun, with it’s special ‘Smashy & Nicey’ duo calling the balls. If you haven’t experienced the Music Room yet, we may just wheel it out again at some point in 2010!

MARCH saw the first of our themed rooms based on the home nations. The St Patrick’s Room was born and with a little help from our friends at PaddyPowerBingo we even fitted it out with a sexy Irish caller.

March was also the month when we launched the Insomniac’s Tournament, after players asked for something to look forward to when playing on the site late at night.

We still found time to design two more new rooms – Mother’s Day Bingo & Grand National Speed Bingo. Now we have two speed bingo rooms, but back then, we had never done anything like this before, and it was great fun.

The other huge change we saw in March was when we upped the prize stakes. Foxy Bingo sponsored the draw and gave away a 19″ HD telly, which was won by Kirstony. I on the other hand, received an even greater prize when BuckyBingo invited me to Old Trafford and Liverpool beat them 4-1!

APRIL began with the left handed bingo room. Our patented ‘left-o-matic’ technology and other features, were obviously an April Fools joke, but it did fool some! lol. We made up for it though by giving away lots of chocolate eggs in our Easter Room Tournaments. Yummy.

England became the second home nation to get it’s own themed room for St George’s Day and we also asked our players to choose the design for our new official FreeBingo T-Shirt. PaddyPower also dropped by for a Guest CM event, and our very own CMs picked up the CM of the Month Award.

MAY day saw the launch of our F1 Speed Bingo room. The format had proven to be a big hit during Grand National week, and now our players had a speed room to enjoy 24/7. It wasn’t the only big change to the site as we completely revamped our full house bingo rooms during ‘Full House Week‘. This change really worked, and when we added the XJP later in the year, these two rooms really took off as some of the most popular rooms on the site.

This was also the first time we added a tournament to Prize Hour, and made tickets absolutely free. These changes added an extra dimension to the chat games, as you could also win a prize by winning the bingo too. Plus, with free tickets player’s couldn’t moan as they had nothing to lose! lol.

May also saw our Player’s Gallery reach over 2,000 photos which was a nice little milestone.

In JUNE we had a great month of fun with our European Bingo Championship Tournaments and the much loved Wimbledon Room. I headed off to London for the annual Online Bingo Summit and we finally decided on a design for our new FreeBingo T-Shirts.

Part 2 [July - December] coming soon…