What is Keno and How Do You Play It?

1. Keno Rooms - Gambling With An Edge
2. Keno House Edge
3. Keno House Edge Calculator
4. Keno - Wizard Of Odds

Keno can be very versatile in terms of pay table and house edge. Also, it depends largely on the maximum number of spots that players can choose and attempt to 'hit' or 'catch'. It is typically limited to 10, 12 or 15 numbers (spots), but it can also be 20 numbers right away. The house edge for Keno is between 20 per cent and 35 per cent. Pick the games with the smallest house edge. This means when you play, you want to win big. If you are lucky enough to win big, walk away from the game. Strategies to improve keno odds Use a. On the surface, maybe, but in reality, no. In fact, in some cases the house edge at keno is actually competitive. As this column is being written there are keno opportunities with practically no house edge. The 9-spot progressive at The Atlantis Reno is over $1,200,000 thus is close to 100% return. A high house edge is bad for players but good for the casino. Keno has a house edge of approximately 30%, which makes it higher than average. Jan 08, 2015 The house edge varies in keno because different casinos have different versions of the game, with some casinos allowing players to choose a minimum of one number, while others require a minimum of four. The average house edge has been calculated around 30%, making keno a highly volatile game.

Simply put, keno is a numbers-based game of luck and patience, which can deliver big winning results, so knowing how the game works, will maximise your chances of being successful.

Gambling has been available for centuries - not decades and you may be surprised to learn that keno originated in China way back in the mid-1800s. The numbers game was then brought to America by Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s and has grown in popularity over the years.

Originally...

Keno would be played with 80 Chinese characters, but as the game became more and more established in the USA, those Chinese characters were replaced by 80 Arabic numerals. There have been many varieties of the game; Nevada had its own version which saw each number accompanied by a racehorse, which gave it a new name: Racehorse Keno.

But, in the 1950s, the racehorses names were removed due to a telling off by governing (tax) bodies.

From Atlantic City to Las Vegas, you will find keno lounges available (including live dealers), where numbered balls are produced by a machine – in a style very similar to the original bingo game.

Keno can be found on many online casinos, allowing players to manually pick numbers or they can choose to play with an automatic pick function. Each round will draw 20 numbers and should you have a winning bet, you will be credited automatically…

Now you've learned the history of the game, it's on to the next step…

…How to play keno!

Playing Keno

In a similar style to the lottery, players are required to pick several numbers on a ticket and yes, you've guessed it – to win, you need to match the numbers you selected to those that are drawn. The ticket will have numbers from 1 through to and including the number 80; you mark from 1 to 20 numbers (some versions only allow 10 selections) before the game begins. The way in which the balls are drawn, will vary; online keno is different to the ping-pong ball machine used in land-based gambling venues…

To start the game, you simply press play or auto and the random numbers will be drawn – and hey presto!

The Good and Bad Points to Playing

Keno Rooms - Gambling With An Edge

The good? It's an easy, slow-paced game that allows bets from as little as £1 a go, plus you can win substantial amounts of cash – if you're lucky.

Now the bad - keno has the highest house edge of all casino games, with a whopping 25% or more!

Now the Rules:

• Various bet levels are available in the game.
• Players can make multiple bets and each bet can have its own win.
• Simultaneous winnings on different bets are added.
• There are maximum bet restrictions imposed.
• Minimum stakes will cost £1.

Keno RTP:

The theoretical return to player of a 10-ball keno game is as follows;

• 1 pick: 75%
• 2 picks: 98.10%
• 3 picks: 90.19%
• 4 picks: 89.02%
• 5 picks: 86.08%
• 6 picks: 93.79%
• 7 picks: 93.61%
• 8 picks: 92.94%
• 9 picks: 93.49%
• 10 picks: 90.82%

The probability of n numbers drawn in the first 40, last 40, or any given 40 is combin(40,n)*combin(40,20-n)/combin(80,20). So the probability of exactly 10 in the first 40 (and 10 in the last 40) is combin(40,10)*combin(40,10)/combin(80,20) = 0.203243. The probability of one half having more than the other is 1-.203243= 0.796757. The probability of a specific half having more is half this number, or 0.398378. If this bet paid even money the house edge would be 20.32%. If the even bet paid 3 to 1 then the house edge on that bet would be 18.70%. If it paid 4 to 1 the player would have a 1.62% edge. About positive expectation blackjack online the more the player plays the greater the probability of a net profit. The best game is currently Unified Gaming’s single deck, with a player edge of 0.16%. If the player flat bet one millions hands the probability of being down would still be about 8.6%. At Boss Media’s single player game with a player edge of 0.07% the probability of a loss after a million hands is about 27.5%.

I doubt certain numbers are more likely than others. My advice is to pick anything, it doesn’t make any difference.

Your overall expected return is the same regardless of how many games you play. Of course it is more likely to hit a number the more machines you play, but if they all miss you lose more money.

'Anonymous' .

Pai gow poker is the least volatile and on average keno is the most.

In Nevada, and I think other major gambling markets in the United States, the balls truly are random and the outcome determined by the balls. However in class II slots, sometimes found in Indian casinos, anything goes.

HEADS - bet that eleven to twenty numbers in the top half appear - even money
TAILS - bet that zero to nine numbers in the top half appear - even money
EVENS - bet that exactly ten numbers in the top half appear - pays 3 to 1

The probability of the tie bet winning is combin(40,10)*combin(40,10)/combin(80,20) = 0.203243. Paying 3 to 1 the house edge is 18.703%. The probability of the heads (or tails) bet winning is (1-0.20343)/2 = 0.398378. Paying even money the house edge is 20.324%.

Compliments will get you everywhere. The number of combinations for n heads is combin(40,n)*combin(40,20-n). This is the number of ways to choose n numbers out of the top 40 and 20-n out of the bottom 40. The following table shows the probability of 0 to 20 heads.

Probability of 0 to 20 Heads

The probability of hitting all 20 is 1 in combin(80,20) = 3,535,316,142,212,180,000. So the odds are more like 3.5 quintillion to one. Assuming 5 billion people on earth, and they all played once a week, there would be one winner every 13.56 million years on average. Most casinos pay the same amount for hitting close to 20. For example the Las Vegas Hilton pays $20,000 for hitting 17 or more out of 20. I have never heard of anyone every hitting 20 out of 20, and doubt very much that it has ever happened.

I disagree. I can’t think of a single major Strip casino without a keno lounge. In general the only casinos without keno are the locals casinos in the suburbs of Vegas, because most of us locals know that keno is a sucker game.

P.S. A reader later wrote in to correct me, stating that the New York New York casino in Las Vegas removed their keno lounge.

Keno House Edge

I hope you’re happy, I spent all day on this. After writing and running a simulation I find that the probability that any 3 lines will contain 11 or more marks is 86.96%! That isn’t even giving the other side a fighting chance. You can go up to 12 marks and still have a probability of 53.68% of winning, or an advantage of 7.36%. However, I think you have the wrong side of the empty row bet. The probability of at least one empty row is only 33.39%, better to take the other side of no empty rows. While I was at this I did lots of other probabilities and put them in a new page of keno props. Here is a list from that page of these and other good even-money bets. The good side is listed.

Even Money Keno Props

Much like live keno the odds are the same regardless of what you pick, but they are independent of the balls the game draws.

Keno House Edge Calculator

That is actually a pretty hard problem. It is easy to get the probability of the number of times any of your four balls are drawn, including repeats. The tricky part is determining the probability that x distinct picks will be chosen, given that any pick was chosen y times. I indicate the answer and solution on my MathProblems.info page, problem 205.

1/2.

If we used keno as a comparison, everybody would have 40 genes, each represented by a keno ball. However, each ball would have unique number. When two people, who are not related, mate it is like combining 80 balls between the two of them into a hopper, and randomly choosing 40 genes for the offspring of the mating.

So when you were conceived, you got half the balls in the hopper, and the other half were wasted. When your brother or sister was conceived he/she got half from the balls drawn when you were born, and half that were not drawn. So you are 50% genetically identical. Much for the same reason that if 40 numbers were drawn in keno, two consecutive draws would average 20 balls in common.

This question was raised and discussed in the forum of my companion site Wizard of Vegas.

Romes

As a reminder to our other readers, Cleopatra Keno plays like conventional keno, except if the last ball drawn matches one of the player's picks AND results in a win, then the player will also win 12 free games with a 2x multiplier. Free games do not earn more free games.

You didn't specify the number of picks or pay table, so let's use the 3-10-56-180-1000 pick-8 pay table, as an example. First, let calculate the return.

The number of ways to catch x balls out of y in keno is the number of ways to pick x balls out of 20 and y-x out of 60. This equals combin(20,x)*combin(60,y-x), to put it in Excel terms. As a further reminder, combin(x,y) = x!/(y!*(x-y)!). Finally x! = 1*2*3*...*x.

With that review out of the way, here is the return table for that pay table. The right column shows the expected square of the win, which we'll need later.

Pick 8 Keno

Next, let's calculate the average bonus. We can see from the table above that the average win, not counting the bonus, is 0.593301. In the bonus, the player gets 12 doubled free spins. Thus, the expected win from the bonus is 2×12×0.593301 = 14.239212.

Next, let's calculate the probability of winning the bonus. If the player catches four numbers, the probability the 20th ball is one of those 4 is 4/20. In general, if the player catches c, then the probability that the 20th ball contributed to the win is c/20.

The formula for winning the bonus is prob(catch 4)*(4/20) + prob(catch 5)*(5/20) + prob(catch 6)*(6/20) + prob(catch 7)*(7/20) + prob(catch 8)*(8/20). We know the probability of any given win from the return table above. So, the probability of winning the bonus is:

0.081504*(4/20) + 0.018303*(5/20) + 0.002367*(6/20) + 0.000160*(7/20) + 0.000004*(8/20) = 0.021644.

With the probability of winning the bonus and the average bonus win, we can calculate the return from the bonus as 0.021644 × 14.239212 = 0.308198.

Not that we need to know, but the overall return for the game is the return from the base game plus the return from the bonus, which equals 0.593301 + 0.308198 = 0.901498.

Now, let's start getting into the actual variance. As a reminder, a general formula about variance is:

var(x + y) = var(x) + var(y) + 2*cov(x,y), where var stands for variance and cov stands for covariance. In this case of this game:

Keno - Wizard Of Odds

Total variance = var(base game) + var(bonus) + 2*cov(base game and bonus).

The fundamental formula for the variance is the E(x^2) - [E(x)]^2. In other words, the expected square of the win less the expected win squared.

That said, let's start with the variance of the base game. Remember when I said before when we would need that expected win squared from the first table. The lower right cell of that first table shows us the expected win squared is 19.530214. We already know the expected win is 0.593301. Thus, the variance of the base game is 19.530214 - 0.593301² = 19.178208.

Next, let's calculate the variance of the bonus (assuming it was already hit). For that, recall that:

var(ax) = a²x, where a is a constant.

Also recall that the variance of n random variables x is nx.

That said, if x is the base win in a bonus game, then the variance of the whole bonus is 2² × 12 × x. We know from above the variance of a single spin in the base game, not counting the bonus, equals 19.178208. So, the variance of the bonus, given a bonus was already hit, is 2² × 12 × 19.178208 = 920.554000.

However, what we need to know is the variance of the bonus before the first ball is drawn, including the possibility the bonus won't be won at all. No, we can't just multiply the variance of the bonus by the probability of winning it. Instead, recall that var(x) = E(x^2) - [E(x)]^2. Let's rearrange that to:

E(x^2) = var(x) + [E(x)]^2

We know the mean and variance of the bonus, so the expected win squared in the bonus is 920.554000 + 19.178208² = 1123.309169.

So, the expected square of the win from the bonus, before the first ball is drawn is the prob(bonus) × E(x^2) = 0.021644 × 1123.309169 = 24.313239.

We already calculated the expected win from the bonus, before the first ball, is 0.308198. So, the overall variance of the bonus, before the first ball, is 24.313239 - 0.308198² = 24.218253.

The next step is to calculate the covariance. 'Why is there a correlation between the base win and the bonus win?', you might ask. It's because the last ball drawn must contribute to a win to trigger the bonus. Given that the last ball contributed towards a win, the average win goes up. As a reminder, Bayes' formula of condition probability says:

P(A given B) = P(A and B)/P(B).

Let's then redo our return table for the base game, given that the last ball was a hit:

Pick 8 Keno given Last Ball Hit

The bottom right cell shows that assuming the last ball was a hit, the average win is 6.757734.

Next, recall from your college statistics class that:

cov(x,y) = exp(xy) - exp(x)*exp(y) .

In our case, let x = base game win and y=bonus win. Let's work on exp(xy) first.

Exp(xy) = prob(bonus won)*(average base game win given bonus won)*average(bonus win) + prob(bonus not won)*(average base game win given bonus not won)*average(bonus win given bonus not won). It's easy to say that average(bonus win given bonus not won) = 0, so we can rewrite as:

Exp(xy) = prob(bonus won)*(average base game win given bonus won)*average(bonus win) =

We already solved for E(x) and E(y), so the covariance is:

cov(x,y) = exp(xy) - exp(x)*exp(y) = 2.082719 - 0.593301 × 0.308198 = 1.899865.

Let's go back to the overall equation for the variance when covariance is involved:

Total variance = var(base game) + var(bonus) + 2*cov(base game and bonus) = 19.178208 + 24.218253 + 2×1.899865 = 47.196191. The standard deviation is the square root of that, which is 6.869948.

So, there you go. That one took me hours, so I hope you're happy.

This question is asked and discussed in my forum at Wizard of Vegas.

Upon doing some research, I found this isn't a side bet, but what the pick-20 ticket pays for catching zero. The following is my complete analysis of the Station Casinos pick 20 ticket.

Station Casinos Pick 20 Keno

The lower right cell shows the overall return of the ticket is 69.70%, which is typical for live keno.

To answer the question about catching 0, the probability column shows the probability of that is 0.001186 and at a win of 200 for 1, it returns 23.71% towards the return.