Race Horse Keno

Race Horse Keno or Nevada Keno is the most popular type today. Visit any Keno parlor in Nevada, night or day, and you’ll find dozens of Keno players in action. The great popularity of these parlors among gamblers is due primarily to two factors: (1) the game is played somewhat like the very well known and popular Bingo, and (2) there are continuous casino advertisements in newspapers and on billboards in Nevada of the $25,000 Keno jackpots that build fascinating dreams of hitting these gigantic jackpots. All one has to do to win one of these $25,000 Keno jackpots is to plunk down a couple of bucks and pick from eight to 15 lucky numbers out of a total of 20 numbers selected at random out of 80.

A typical Keno card

As played in Nevada casinos, Keno differs from regular Keno in several ways. Standard Keno, like Bingo, requires large numbers of players for the successful operation of the game. The purchase price of a Keno or Bingo ticket is the same for all players these game sessions, lasting only a few hours, are usually run once a week. On the other hand, Keno, Nevada style, can be played by one or more players; each player selects from one to 15 numbers and can wager any amount he likes on selection, providing it is within the house maximum betting dealt every few minutes.

Most Nevada parlors seat 60 or more poker players . They contain several tables loaded with keno tickets, and the players are supplied with either black crayons or ink and brushes. Each ticket bears the numbers one to 80 and, on his ticket, the player marks the number or numbers he wishes to play. A great number of different bets can be made at Keno because the players can select various combinations of numbers. A 1-spot ticket is one on which a player has marked, and is betting on, a single number. If that number appears in the 20 drawn numbers, the player wins. When he marks two numbers, it is a 2-spot ticket, and he wins if both numbers appear among the 20 that are drawn. He may mark and bet on groups of as many as 15 numbers that is known as a 15-spot ticket. But the most popular ticket is the 10-spot ticket.
The play of the game is as follows: Once the player has marked his ticket, he presents his cash (which usually averages from 60 cents to $3) and the marked ticket at the Keno counter, where the clerk makes two duplicates by punching out the player’s numbers on a house ticket, and adds the amount wagered and the number of the game to be next played. The clerk gives the player one copy, and retains the original and the other copy.
When it is time for the drawing to begin, an announcement is made over the loud-speaker, and everyone gathers to watch. The Keno blower, which is elevated behind the Keno counter, contains 80 Ping-Pong balls numbered one through 80. The operators starts the Keno blower, and the Ping-Pong balls can be seen as they are being thoroughly mixed by a constant stream of compressed air. Then one by one, they are drawn. As each ball is drawn, its number is called and flashed on the electrically lighted Keno boars for the online poker players to check against their tickets. When the twentieth ball has been drawn, the game ends. With bated breath, each player compares his ticket with the drawn numbers, and the winners go to the Keno counter to collect. Minutes later, a new game is played.

The 1-spot ticket is the simplest form of Keno betting. You select the one number and wager $1 and win, you receive $3.20 ($2.20 plus your $1), which means the odds you received were 2.2 to 1. What most women Keno players don’t stop to consider is that although only 1 number out of 20 has to be picked, those 20 are selected at random out of 80. In other words, there are 80 numbers on your ticket, and 20 of the numbers are drawn so your chance of winning poker is 20 in 80, or 1 out of 4. So it costs $4 to win $3.20; the house take on four $1 bets on a 1-spot ticket is 80 cents, or 20 percent. This makes the 1-spot ticket one of the sucker bets in the casino.
If you play a 2-spot ticket for $1 and win, you receive $13, when the correct payoff should be about $16.60 – this time the house bite is 21.8 percent. This makes the 2-spot ticket a worse bet than the 1-spot ticket. The 3-spot, 4-spot, 5-spot, 6-spot , 7-spot, 8-spot , 9-spot, 10-spot, 11-spot, 12-spot , 13-spot, 14-spot and 15-spot tickets, as well as similar tickets such as 12-spot high-low ticket, 10-spot group of 5, deuce ways group of 2, 9-spot groups of 3, and others, average about 23 percent against the player. Of the millions of dollars wagered at Keno, about 60 percent is bet on the 10-spot ticket. A $2.50 bet on a 10-spot ticket can net you a $25,000 Jackpot:

What are your chances of betting $2.50 on a 10-spot ticket and hitting the $25,000 jackpot? Your chance of accomplishing this feat is about one in nine million. Yet, daily, hundreds of Keno players are hoping to achieve this miracle. But there are other winning pay-offs that are not quite so improbable. Picking nine numbers will bring a payoff of 2,900 for 1; here the chance is about 1 in 163,000. Picking eight numbers pays off at odds of 1,300 for 1 here the chance is about 7,000 to 1. And so on down the line, to picking five numbers, which pays off at even money, with about one chance in 20 of happening. If four or fewer numbers are picked there is no payoff.
The following table shows the percentages in favor of the house on all tickets from the 1-spot ticket through the 15-spot ticket, calculated on the payoff price as in most Keno parlor games in Nevada.

However, each casino has a $25,000 maximum payoff limit on each game to aggregate players. Thus, if two outstandingly lucky players were to hit the $25,000 jackpot, they would have to share the remains of the $25,000 scarney jackpot after the smaller winners were paid.
A final bit of advice to Keno players: Don’t gamble your money away expecting to win a $25,000 Keno jackpot this is nine times more difficult than winning the $50,000 top prize in the New York or New jersey state lotteries in which, by the way, the odds happen to be one in a million to win.