A Closer Look at Keno Online Casinos Oct 29, 2001, 13:20 By Steve "Eagle Eye" Walker http://www.gamblingonlinemagazine.com

Keno has a rich history as a gambling game both inside and outside the casino.  In this article, we will show you some  of the finer points of this ancient game, what to look for, what to avoid, and some differences between play in traditional brick and mortar casinos and online casinos.

The Great Wall
Keno has been in existence for at least 2000 years, and surprisingly, hasn't changed much since it's inception.  Keno's first historical milestone was purportedly in helping to fund the Great Wall of China.  In those times, it was tough to find people qualified to work as Keno runners in the mountainous regions of China.  So carrier pigeons were employed to shuttle pieces of parchment bearing the Chinese symbols of the Keno table to remote areas.  It is still a mystery to me how these clever birds carried the large jackpots back to the correct winners.  But in any case, it's a pretty big wall.

Keno can be a lot of fun to play.  In many states, it is available in restaurants and bars, and can be a great way to pass  the time until your meal arrives.  Of course, to the Internet gambler, it is available at home, too.

There is a great range of Keno games available on the Internet today, ranging from free games with no prizes, to games within the Internet casinos.

Keno 101
For the uninitiated, I will begin with a brief description of Keno, especially Keno on the Internet, including the subtle ways that it differs from the variety of Keno games found in brick and mortar casinos.

Keno is a  simple game of picking the right numbers.  You are given a table of 80 numbers.  There are three decisions that you need to make. 
These are:
1: How much to wager on ths ticket.
2: How many numbers, or "spots" in Keno-Speak, to choose (generally 1-15, although some casinos have a minimum of 3, and some allow you to choose up to 20), and
3: The individual numbers you want.

The number of spots you choose will determine the paytable for your game.  In general, the more spots you choose, the more matches, or "catches", you will need to qualify for a winning ticket.  Also, it increases the prize (and of course, difficulty!) for catching all the numbers you choose.

After your choice is registered , a random number generator (RNG) selects 20 numbers.  Based on the catches you make you are paid according to the appropriate payout table.  That's all there is to it, or is it?

The first thing that you should know before you start playing Keno is that it generally has about the highest house hold of any device in the casino, with the possible exception of the payphone.

To illustrate this point, let us consider the odds of catching 20 out of 20 spots on the Keno ticket. There are very few casinos that still offer 20-spot tickets, but those who do, generally pay between $100,000 and $500,000 for catch-20 $1 ticket.  A pittance, compared to the difficulty of the job.  The probability of catching all 20 spots on that ticket is 1 in 3,535,316,142,212,180,000.  Or to put that number in perspective, if every person in the United States of America were to purchase one Keno ticket per second, for 24 hours a day, everyday, there would be on average, one-catch-20 winner evry 373 years!

Getting Ready to Play
In traditional brick and mortar casinos, Keno is played by marking spots on the Keno sheet with a colored crayon and then handing the completed Keno sheet to the Keno runner.  Groups of spots may be circled to buy "Way Tickets".  I am spared the complexity of explaining how "Way Tickets" work, since to the best of my knowledge, no online casino in operation supports them.

Playing Online
In online casinos, as you might expect, you mark your spots by clicking on your desired numbers.  Generally, the pay table for the number of spots you choose  will be displayed on the same screen as your ticket so that you always know how many catches it takes for you to get a payout.  Some online Keno games will allow you to purchase more than one ticket for multiple games without reentering your numbers.

After your numbers are selected, the game begins.  In both online and brick and mortar casinos, the 20 numbers are called one at a time and marked on a number board.  After all 20 numbers are called you can check your ticket to see if you caught enough numbers to qualify for a payout.  Remember, the more numbers you pick, the higher the number of catches it will take to qualify for a payout.

Now that we have the basics of the game covered, let's move on to what is probably the most important decision you need to make once you decide to play Keno.  That decision is where to play.

Selecting Your Casino

It would seem that the selection of a casino in which to play Keno would be easy.  Just pick one that seems fun to play, easy to use, and has the coin denominations you like.  Also, you might think that since gambling on the Internet is largely unregulated, the game will never have as high odds as the games in Nevada, Atlantic City, or any other tightly regulated environment.  In both cases you might be in for a surprise.

For some reason, there seems to be tremendous variation between the pay tables offered at various casinos, both brick and mortar and online.  Perhaps part of the reason is the difficulty in comparing two particular pay tables, even side by side.  It takes quite a few calculations to know which game has a higher house win percentage.  Although not strictly the case, online casinos generally offer better odds for Keno (as well as many other games) than their land based counterparts.  Land based casinos generally offer games between 60% and 75% return to the player, while online casinos generally offer games that return between 65% and 95% for the player.  Maximizing the player return will make a tremendous difference in your playing time, enjoyment of the game, and the chance that you can walk way a winner.

It is also the case that some of the games that are more attractive and easy to use have much lower pay tables than others.  Bottom line: Let the pay table be your guide.  You can use the following selection guide to help you evaluate pay tables.

Evaluating the House Advantage
My original plan was to show you the process of calculating the house advantage for various pay tables in Keno.  However, when I attempted to show my wife, she fell asleep.  I will now spare you the same fate by skipping directly to the results of  those calculations.

I have assembled the house edge percentages for 5 organizations, including 3 online casino software suppliers and two brick and mortar casinos.  To the best of my knowledge, the house edge listed for each of the software providers below applies to all of their licensees:

Casino/                  AVG.
Software                 House
Provider                 Edge
__________________________________
Microgaming              7.5%
Boss Media               14.54%
Tropicana                25.46%
Cryptologic              27.14%
Harrah's Lake Tahoe      34.32%  

The Average house edge was computed by taking an average of the advantage for each of the $1 tickets that the house offers.

Even within a casino, the payouts can vary widely between tickets depending on the number of spots selected.  Now that we have determined that the microgaming sites, on average, offer the best Keno, let's look at their pay tables in a bit more detail.  The table shows the payouts for each type of ticket available at Microgaming casinos.

Spots                 House Edge
_________________________________

1                     25.00%
2                      7.91%
3                      6.96%
4                      6.21%
5                      6.13%
6                      6.21%
7                      5.85%
8                      7.10%
9                      6.57%
10                     5.46%
11                     6.90%
12                     5.78%
13                     5.10%
14                     5.73%
15                     5.61%

By examination of this table, you can see that the house edge is minimized at 5.10% by playing 13 spots.  Never play a single spot at this site - the house has a whopping 25% advntage over the player!

For completeness, I have reprinted their entire paytable for 13 spots below:

Catch this       Payout on a   
many spots       $1.00 ticket
_____________________________
3                 $0.50
4                 $0.50
5                 $3.00
6                 $4.00
7                 $5.00
8                 $20.00
9                 $80.00  
10                $240.00
11                $500.00    
12                $3000.00
13                $6000.00 

Lastly, before you play, make sure that there are no other special rules under which your wnnings may be subject.  In Nevada, many casinos will post maximum payouts for a single game of $100,000.  While that may be a large number, if it were imposed on the table above, you cetainly would not want to buy a $25 ticket.  If you did win the big one, your $150,000 winner would be reduced to the $100,000 maximum, further increasing the house advantage.

The Future
Keno will continue well into the next millenium.  As more online casinos begin to offer it, most will be forced to raise their paytables to stay competitive  in this game.  Also, you can be sure that the brick and mortar casinos will begin to take note of the higher paytables offered on the Internet.  All in all, it bodes well for the Keno aficionado, and any repairs necessary to the Great Wall.