ushope777
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16 November 2013 - 5:47am

Online Keno

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Although Keno has never been my favorite game, I did kind of enjoy playing it last time I was at a land casino. My friend's husband has one several hand pays playing keno. However, I read that Keno has the worst payout of any other game in the land casino. I also read the odds are MUCH higher for winning Keno at the online casinos. I wonder how much higher? I read 60 to 70 percent payouts at the land casinos, so I wonder what the online casino average payout rates are for Keno compared to those numbers?

auCL-Ed
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18 November 2013 - 12:12am
#1

You're right that keno is one of the worst bets in the land casinos. Take a look at this page at The Wizard of Odds and you can see that the payout is, as you have heard, usually between 60% and 75%, which is shocking.

Online the odds can be much better, but it depends on where you are playing and what software they use, but in general its still a poor game in terms of payout rate. If you're up for a quick maths lesson I can teach you how to work out the probability of winning and the payout rate yourself.

In keno you almost always have 80 balls and 20 of them are picked. You can substitute those numbers if you find another game with a different number of balls or picks. Now to work out your chance of winning you just multiply the chance of matching each ball as it picked with one of your numbers. Lets say you play 2 numbers:

The first number has 20 out of 80 chances of coming up.
The second number has 19 out of 79 chances of coming up.
And so on if you have more numbers.

So your chance of winning a 2 spot game are...

(20/80) * (19/79) = 0.060126582 which is roughly 6.01%

To work out the payout rate, just multiply the payout you get for winning by that percentage chance of winning. In our imaginary game, you are paid $14 for betting $1 on a 2 spot game.

So...

0.060126582 * 14 = 0.841772152 and your payout rate is about 84.2%

Now it gets more complicated when there are smaller prizes if you get 2 out of 3 numbers, or 4 out of 5 etc. If you are interested in working out how to calculate that you can follow the guide on this page. Otherwise you can do it the easy way and use this handy keno calculator to work out the overall payout rate.

I entered the numbers for Net Entertainment's Bonus Keno game and got a return of 81.66% for a 10 spot game. So better than the land casinos, but still very bad.

2 hope777, LuckyMe

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usbarbadosslim93
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18 November 2013 - 3:03pm
#2

I have to say that I only dig keno when I am at a bar and have been drinking heavily. I know that the numbers are already set when the game begins, but I love seeing where the pinball or rocket will hit on the screen when I am drinking.

Other than that, I have tried to play online and the casino and it just isn't the same 🙄

auCL-Ed
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18 November 2013 - 9:27pm
#3

Yes I have to agree, playing solitary online keno is up there with watching paint dry for me.

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usLuckyMe
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19 November 2013 - 12:10am
#4

I have tried playing keno too, but it's just too boring for me to even be interested in it.