Ticket Costs and Payoffs

All casinos that have keno lounges have a booklet with a rate card, showing the straight ticket payoffs. In most casinos there is usually one type of straight ticket available, but some casinos have special tickets, usually for $1, with slightly different payoffs.

These rate cards should be consulted before a game is played, so that you know just how much you have to pay for your tickets and what the potential payouts are for your catches. A typical rate card showing the 70¢ tickets with all payoffs from a one-spot to a fifteen-spot ticket is clearly shown on the opposite page.

Examining the booklet, you can see that, playing a six-spot 70¢ straight ticket, you can win as little as 60¢ if you catch three numbers, or as much as $1,100 if you catch all six numbers.

If you had played the same six-spot for $1.40, the payout would be double, and if you played the game for $3.50, the payout would automatically be five times the original payout shown for the 70¢ ticket.

$50,000 and Progressive Payouts

Although some casinos still have 70¢ tickets with a grand prize of $25,000, most of the houses now feature a payoff of at least $50,000, with minimum $1 tickets. On the Strip the minimum can be as high as $2. Keno, if one keeps losing, can add up to an expensive undertaking.

Not - only are $50,000 payouts the norm, but several casinos have instituted a progressive payout. It begins at $50,000 and moves up to as high as $200,000 or $250,000.

Each time the huge payoff is not paid out, the progressive payoff increases in small increments. At one casino it was at $69,000, at another it was already up to the maximum of $200,000 when I visited Vegas last. Needless to say, if you want to play the game, wait for the maximum payoff before investing your couple of dollars.

the potential payouts

The progressive payoff

the progressive prize

The ticket costs