Keno

Keno is one of the oldest forms of gambling around. It is thought that the Chinese invented the game in order to fund The Great Wall, and also their military operations well over 3000 years ago. To play keno today, you mark anywhere from 1 to 20 numbers on a sheet that contains the numbers from 1 to 80. Once you have made your selections, the house draws 20 numbers at random from the pool of 80.

Is Keno a good bet? Not really. The typical Keno game played in most casinos has a house edge or house advantage of 25% or more. That means that for every dollar you wager, you will be lucky if you get back 75 cents! There are much better games out there with a smaller house edge.

Few people realize it, but the casino-wide keno systems are much different then the electronic keno systems that you see on the slot floor. The electronic keno machines generally have a much lower house edge and in fact instead of a house edge of 25% or more as in traditional keno, the edge might be 8 or 10%. Why the difference?

A casino-wide keno game is unpredictable. An electronic keno machine is very predictable. In a regular keno game, the house edge is higher because a real game runs the risk that they will have to pay off more then one winner. This is why most casinos have an "aggregate limit" on an given keno game. If 10 people all pick 20 numbers and the casinos picks the same 20 numbers, their 1 dollar keno tickets could each be worth millions! No casino could afford that risk, so they limit their exposure with an aggregate limit so that no matter how many winners there may be, there is a top-end to the amount of money that will pay out on a given game.

An electronic keno game is much different. In fact, its more like a slot machine. It has a certain payback percentage programmed into it, and since a game is unique and only one individual is playing it, the maximum monetary exposure (risk) to the casino is predictable. There can be only 1 winner on an electronic game!

Also, as a bit of controversy - here is something to think about: In a live casino-wide keno game, the house has no way of knowing whether there will be zero winners, 1 winners, thousands of winners, and how much each person will win. Because of this, the payback percentage fluctuates wildly since it's impossible to know in advance how the players will fare. However, in an electronic game, if the machine is programmed to pay back a certain percentage over the long term, then ultimately the machine chooses whether to draw the balls you have chosen to declare you a winner, or to only choose some of the balls, so that it wins at times. Remember this: playing electronic keno is the same as playing a slot machine: it's not the numbers you choose that matters (or how many or where they are on the board), what matters is whether the machine has determined that the outcome of the next game will be in your favor. Just like a slot machine.