Casino Advantage in Keno

But these gamblers are operating under a delusion. On a few occasions, I've monitored the game for several hours after selecting twelve numbers, but not betting on them.

The first time I did this I went twenty-three games without any kind of payoff. Then, finally, I won $3 by catching six numbers. If I had been betting $7 a game, my net loss after those twenty-three games would have been $161. This kind of money really adds up. At 70¢ a game, losing twenty-three in a mw totals $16.10.

Not only does this result in lost money, but wasted time as well, because there's nothing more boring and dreary than watching that board game after game with nothing of value showing up.

More than two hundred games are played in a single day, and at $5 a game, a whole day's loss would run about $800, Counting on a few small payoffs. For most of the payouts are very small, rarely amounting to more than 5-1. It is rare to bear of any big winners.

The casino is eager to broadcast and Publicize wins by players amounting to thousands of dollars, but a player can sit in a casino for a month straight, hour after hour and day after day, and never hear of a payoff exceeding a few hundred dollars. Those $250,000 payoffs are events that have occurred once or twice in the casino's history.

Keno basically is a seductive game, appealing to those greedy enough to want to win a great deal of money for an investment in pennies. The house takes full advantage of the bettor's avarice and, in the course of catering to this greed, makes a small fortune for itself.

To get big payoffs, there must be a high percentage of catches, and the odds keep rising against getting those catches. The probability of hitting nine out of ten numbers selected on a ten-spot straight ticket is something like .00061.

the player bets

broadcast and Publicize wins

the progressive payouts