If you are busy and don't have time, you can skip to the winners announcements right at the bottom.
It's been a little while since the last bingo game, and with quite a few new players I thought I would make this post a little bit longer and go through some of the things involved in the running of the draw so that someone might also consider running a game that I can play as well! Also, apologies to those that might have submitted an entry but did not put their link or comment on this page, and I hope I haven't missed anyone since are so many entries this time - thank you all for making this a success!
In the beginning...
Eight days ago I created a post for the fourth Steemit Bingo Game, 
First things first
To make sure that the draw is done as efficiently as possible, I first create a spreadsheet with all the entries and the names on their card, making sure that all the name are spelled correctly. This is important because I use the "Replace" function in Excel to highlight all the names on the cards so they have to match exactly. I do this by using the conditional formatting function to look at names with no duplicate (the white cells) to check the spelling against the followers list:
This actually also gives me a good idea of the spread of names on the bingo cards but I do some other analysis of this later on. But it was nice to see that 
Next I do a count of all the different names on the bingo cards to work out who is on most people's card, but I also do the counts to make sure that when the names are drawn I have checked off the correct number of names from the cards. From this I can see that 105 out of the 250 names from the followers list (not 275 as they joined after I have drawn the names) have been used on the cards, which is not a bad coverage of the followers list but I hope this will also encourage people within this group to go and learn about other members of the group.
Now I am not surprised that 
There were also 9 players that used the optional 'x' symbol to get the 20th name drawn. I wonder if this strategy will work out well for them :)
Now to the draw
I use random.org to come up with the numbers that represent the order in which the 250 names are drawn. I simply put in the parameters to give me 250 numbers and use a large enough number to make sure that I don't get a repeated number and then I get a list of randomly generated numbers just like that!
So basically I just assign each name on the followers list with a number like so:
And then sort the numbers from lowest to highest to get the order that I draw the names from. And so now we can get on with the draw itself...
Name 1-4
With 250 names to choose from, the chances of someone picking the first four names and claiming bingo is well... highly unlikely, considering that only 105 of the 250 names were used in the cards. And since two of the first four names were not picked by anyone, there were no miracles in this edition either. So we have an eight-way tie for the lead after the first four names:
Name 5-20
We hit a small drought with no one picking the next 11 names drawn, but then 3 more names came up by the 20th name drawn (finally) and so at the early stages of the draw it was still anyone's game to win. For those that had taken advantage of the 'x' symbol to get the 20th name (
So after 20 names only 4 players are yet to pick up a name, and we a clear leader in 
Name 21-30
Two popular names came up during this period, with 
Name number 30, which was 
So no change in the lead but there is a four way tie at the moment and
In case you find it hard to follow what's happening at the moment, here's what it looks like:
Name 31-40
This is the crucial period since the name required by our leader is going to be drawn as the 44th name, so if anyone is going to have a chance of sneaking into the lead and stealing the game away from her this would be the period to make their move... we have
Name 41-50
With a total of 250 names I was expecting this Bingo Game to run a lot longer, but surprisingly we are not even one-fifth through the list of names and already we are going to have a winner.
And the winner is... with the name that was on basically everyone's card !
She will receive half of the SBD generated from the original game post and the winner's announcement post as well as the generous donations from 
Wait, there's more!
And because she made Bingo using 
I also want to give a special mention to
Some final thoughts
This is the first time I have seen a combination of strategies play to help produce a win so well played 
So in the end I think the optional rule modifications made for a rather interesting draw, but I would be interested in hearing some feedback and ideas about how we can make the game even better for you next time!
Thank you to everyone who has participated in this edition of Steemit Bingo!
Prizes will be paid out and finalized with the transfers added to this post in 7 days, so if you want to support