KENO ~ Casino Game Reviews

One of the oldest casino games we know of is Keno. A lot of people think it is a suckers game or just something to do while waiting for your ride back to the airport. I've never tried to calculate the odds at a land based casino but I have played and won a few games waiting for dinner.

The general consensus is that Keno is for fools and on the surface it may well be. But the great thing about the game is that you get to determine your own odds and variance (risk) to some degree. You do this by changing the number of picks on the keno card/screen as we'll see later in the article. As of my research for this article; Microgaming, 3Dice and Rival all had the same paytables for Keno.

RTG Casinos each have the option of configuring the paytable. The only way to know what kind of a deal you are getting is to click one pick at a time and run the results through a Keno odds calculator (which you can easily find online with a Google search). See a winning keno pic below...

The good news is that all RTG's run nearly the same Keno odds within a few percentage points. The only thing you have to watch out for is the max payout (which should be listed on the machine). For instance you could bet 15 of the 80 possible numbers which should pay $2.5 million if you hit them all on a $10 bet; but be restricted to a lousy $50,000 max payout. The solution of course would be to only bet $1 with nine numbers picked which would give you a win of $50,000 for all nine. Confused? No need to be; we'll break it all down here.

With Microgaming, Rival, and 3Dice Keno there are six combinations that net an overall RTP of more than 94%. Hardly a fools game. Picking 13,10,15,14,12, or 7 numbers will give you a range (in order) of between 94.9% to 94.15%                                                         The Basics of Winning Keno

RTG has few wagers that pay more than 85% but a hat trick can pay handsomely if you keep your betting in line with the maximum payout. The seven number pick at RTG is superior to the other platforms mentioned if you prefer a high risk, high reward game.

MGS, Rival and 3Dice paytables give .5, .5, 1, 6, 12, 36, 100 for a standard deviation of 1.94% while the RTG paytable gives 0,0,0, 2, 30, 400, 8000 for a standard deviation of 41.06%

This shows that RTG Keno is more of a high variance game that will not pay out as often but when it does pay it will pay out a lot more (at seven numbers, this is the widest variance I've found, so that is why it is mentioned. It should give an overall view of the difference in the softwares when it comes to Keno)

Minimum bet at RTG Casinos is $0.01, at 3Dice $0.02 and at MGS and Rival it costs a dollar per chance. For the bonus user, Keno can be a handy tool to make play-through if it is allowed in the terms and conditions. You know that you will get at least 90% and you can adjust your risk/variance to suit your style. There is always the chance of a big hit too.

The Wizard of Odds once said that Keno is known to the locals in Las Vegas as a sucker game, and maybe the Keno Lounges in Vegas pay miserably, but we online casino players have the tools at our disposal to make it a wise choice, and besides that, it can be a heck of a lot of fun!!!

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The Professional Keno Player