Keno/kiːnoʊ/ is a lottery-like gambling game often played at modern casinos, and also offered as a game by some state lotteries.
Players wager by choosing numbers ranging from 1 through (usually) 80. After all players make their wagers, 20 numbers (some variants draw fewer numbers) are drawn at random, either with a ball machine similar to ones used for lotteries and bingo, or with a random number generator.
The official website of the North Carolina Education Lottery. Back in the ’70s, he said, residents used to celebrate the end of the long winters by swapping partners. These days, they host a summer solstice party under the midnight sun at the top of Keno Hill, 1,825 metres above sea level, and end the season with a raucous Labour Day weekend festival known as Keno Gras, featuring costumes and a pig roast. Live Keno may not be the most exciting title that InBet has ever released, but it’s still a popular way to play this classic casino favorite. Adding in a live, timed element to gameplay brings back the feel that this game has in brick-and-mortar establishments: namely, one of a pastime that can be enjoyed while you relax and do something else. Jan 20, 2016 In live keno, the player uses a crayon and paper to indicate his picks. Every few minutes numbers will be a live draw from a hopper filled with numbered balls. In video keno, the player touches a screen, sometimes using a wand, to pick numbers and the machine does the draw randomly. Keno game has some “special” numbers in the Chinese conception, so here are their meanings: Number 6 represents the wealth and is the number of businesses in China; Number 8 has a great magical connotation and power, being the number of prosperity and wealth; Number 9 it is the number of the Chinese Emperor, having also spiritual.
Each casino sets its own series of payouts, called 'paytables'. The player is paid based on how many numbers were chosen (either player selection, or the terminal picking the numbers), the number of matches out of those chosen, and the wager.
There are a wide variety of keno paytables depending on the casino, usually with a larger 'house edge' than other games offered by that casino. The house edge ranges from less than 4 percent[1] to over 35 percent.[2] The typical house edge for non-slot casino games is under 5 percent.[3]
History[edit]
The word keno has French or Latin roots (Fr. quine 'five winning numbers', L. quini 'five each'), but by all accounts the game originated in China. Legend has it that the invention of the game saved an ancient city in time of war, and its widespread popularity helped raise funds to build the Great Wall of China. In modern China, the idea of using lotteries to fund a public institution was not accepted before the late 19th century.[4]
Chinese lotteries are not documented before 1847 when the Portuguese government of Macau decided to grant a license to lottery operators. According to some, results of keno games in great cities were sent to outlying villages and hamlets by carrier pigeons, resulting in its Chinese name 白鸽票 báigē piào, literally 'white dove ticket', pronounced baak-gap-piu in Cantonese (on which the Western spelling 'pak-ah-pu' / 'pakapoo' was based).
The Chinese played the game using sheets printed with Chinese characters, often the first 80 characters of the Thousand Character Classic, from which the winning characters were selected.[5][6] Eventually, Chinese immigrants introduced keno to the US in the 19th century,[7] where the name was Westernized into boc hop bu[6] and puck-apu.[5] By 1866, it had already become a widely popular gambling game in Houston, Texas, under the name keno.[8]
Probabilities[edit]
Keno payouts are based on how many numbers the player chooses and how many of those numbers are 'hit', multiplied by the proportion of the player's original wager to the 'base rate' of the paytable. Typically, the more numbers a player chooses and the more numbers hit, the greater the payout, although some paytables pay for hitting a lesser number of spots. For example, it is not uncommon to see casinos paying $500 or even $1,000 for a 'catch' of 0 out of 20 on a 20 spot ticket with a $5.00 wager. Payouts vary widely by casino. Most casinos allow paytable wagers of 1 through 20 numbers, but some limit the choice to only 1 through 10, 12, and 15 numbers, or 'spots' as the numbers selected are known.[9]
The probability of a player hitting all 20 numbers on a 20 spot ticket is 1 in 3,535,316,142,212,174,320.[10]
Even though it is virtually impossible to hit all 20 numbers on a 20 spot ticket, the same player would typically also get paid for hitting 'catches' 0, 1, 2, 3, and 7 through 19 out of 20, often with the 17 through 19 catches paying the same amount as the solid 20 hit. Some of the other paying 'catches' on a 20 spot ticket or any other ticket with high 'solid catch' odds are in reality very possible to hit:
| Hits | Probability |
|---|---|
| 0 | 1 in 843.380 |
| 1 | 1 in 86.446 |
| 2 | 1 in 20.115 |
| 3 | 1 in 8.009 |
| 4 | 1 in 4.877 |
| 5 | 1 in 4.287 |
| 6 | 1 in 5.258 |
| 7 | 1 in 8.826 |
| 8 | 1 in 20.055 |
| 9 | 1 in 61.420 |
| 10 | 1 in 253.801 |
| 11 | 1 in 1,423.822 |
| 12 | 1 in 10,968.701 |
| 13 | 1 in 118,084.920 |
| 14 | 1 in 1,821,881.628 |
| 15 | 1 in 41,751,453.986 |
| 16 | 1 in 1,496,372,110.872 |
| 17 | 1 in 90,624,035,964.712 |
| 18 | 1 in 10,512,388,171,906.553 |
| 19 | 1 in 2,946,096,785,176,811.500 |
| 20 | 1 in 3,535,316,142,212,174,320.000 |
Probabilities change significantly based on the number of spots that are picked on each ticket.
References[edit]
- ^Online Keno odds
- ^Shackleford, Michael. 'Keno - Strategy and Odds by The Wizard of Odds'. Wizard of Odds Consulting, Inc. Retrieved 21 July 2010.
- ^Casino advantages for various games
- ^'Keno History'. kenoonline.org. Retrieved 9 June 2015.
- ^ abMelanie Yap, Dianne Leong Man. Colour, confusion and concessions, pp.240-241.
- ^ ab'Chinese Gambling Games; Mysteries of Fan Tan And Boc Hop Bu. Two Popular Games in the Chinese Quarters of American Cities-- Superstitions of the Players. Boc Hop Bu. Superstitions'(PDF). The New York Times. 5 February 1888.
- ^History of Keno. Transl. from German, 2017.
- ^'The New York Times'. 29 July 1866.Cite journal requires
|journal=(help) - ^'Tutorial - How to play Keno'. Gambling Info. Retrieved 27 June 2011.
- ^Mark Bollman (2014). Basic Gambling Mathematics: The Numbers Behind the Neon. CRC Press. pp. 40–41. ISBN9781482208931.