Keno

Keno is one of a few casino games that tends to be a lot more popular overseas than it is in the UK, but online casino players over here are beginning to catch on to the fun and potential profits that keno offers. In a nutshell, keno is a lottery-style game. Players can choose anything from 1 to 15 numbers (sometimes 1 to 10 or 1 to 20, depending on the casino) from the range 1 to 80.

When the game begins, 20 numbers are drawn at random. The more numbers the player successfully matches, the more they win. It’s a very simple concept but one that has certainly stood the test of time – especially when you consider that fact that keno has a history spanning more than 2,000 years!

The more numbers you select – and successfully match – the more you will win. However, the law of odds versus probabilities is very much at work here. The odds you are paid for matching 15 numbers might be 10,000 to 1 or so (again, depending on the casino you play at), but the chances of you achieving such a feat are far smaller than those odds suggest. It is therefore well worth selecting fewer numbers if you want to increase your chances of success.

Like the lottery, keno is a game that you will either love or loathe. It is a game of pure luck, so there is no way to influence the outcome in any way. And because there are 80 possible numbers that can be drawn in any given game, casino strategies such as keeping records of past numbers in order to make future predictions are fairly redundant here.

Our advice is to try playing your lucky numbers if you’re already ahead, but to avoid taking keno too seriously. Your chances of having a profitable session would be much better if you focused on the blackjack table or roulette wheel.

A typical payout table appears below. The top row shows the number of numbers played and the left hand column shows the numbers that have been matched. The prize paid out is shown where the appropriate row and column intersect.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
1	3	1	1	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5
2	-	9	2	2	1	1	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5
3	-	-	16	6	3	2	1	1	1	1	1	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5
4	-	-	-	12	15	3	6	3	2	2	1	1	0.5	0.5	0.5
5	-	-	-	-	50	30	12	6	4	3	2	2	3	2	1
6	-	-	-	-	-	75	36	19	8	5	6	4	4	3	2
7	-	-	-	-	-	-	100	90	20	10	15	24	5	5	5
8	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	720	80	30	25	72	20	12	15
9	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1,200	600	180	250	80	50	50
10	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1,800	1,000	500	240	150	150
11	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	3,000	2,000	500	500	300
12	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	4,000	3,000	1,000	600
13	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	6,000	2,000	1,200
14	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	7,500	2,500
15	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	10,000