Keno Odds and Payouts
The exact probability of catching any number of keno spots, why the house edge runs 25-30%, and how to read a keno pay table before you buy a ticket.
Keno is the most expensive game in the casino, typically by a factor of twenty to fifty against the table games. Everything below is intended to make that concrete rather than to talk you out of it — a slow game with a lottery-shaped payoff is a legitimate thing to want, and it is worth knowing the price.
How the game works
Eighty numbers. You choose between 1 and 20 of them — your spots or picks. Twenty balls are drawn. You are paid according to how many of your picks appear among the twenty drawn, which is your catch.
The probability of catching exactly k of your n picks is:
P(k) = C(20,k) × C(60,n−k) / C(80,n)
Everything on this page comes out of that formula. There is nothing else to the game.
Odds of catching every spot
| Ticket | Outcome | Odds | Probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pick 1 | catch all 1 | 1 in 4 | 25.000000% |
| Pick 2 | catch all 2 | 1 in 17 | 6.012658% |
| Pick 3 | catch all 3 | 1 in 72 | 1.387537% |
| Pick 4 | catch all 4 | 1 in 326 | 0.306339% |
| Pick 5 | catch all 5 | 1 in 1,551 | 0.064492% |
| Pick 6 | catch all 6 | 1 in 7,753 | 0.012898% |
| Pick 7 | catch all 7 | 1 in 40,979 | 0.002440% |
| Pick 8 | catch all 8 | 1 in 230,115 | 0.000435% |
| Pick 9 | catch all 9 | 1 in 1,380,688 | 0.000072% |
| Pick 10 | catch all 10 | 1 in 8,911,711 | 0.000011% |
The jump from pick 6 to pick 10 is a factor of about 1,150. Pay tables do not increase by anything close to that.
Full distribution for an 8-spot ticket
The most commonly played ticket, in full:
| Catch | Probability | Odds |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 8.8266% | 1 in 11.3 |
| 1 | 26.6464% | 1 in 3.8 |
| 2 | 32.8146% | 1 in 3.0 |
| 3 | 21.4786% | 1 in 4.7 |
| 4 | 8.1504% | 1 in 12.3 |
| 5 | 1.8303% | 1 in 54.6 |
| 6 | 0.2367% | 1 in 422.5 |
| 7 | 0.0160% | 1 in 6,232.3 |
| 8 | 0.0004% | 1 in 230,114.6 |
Note that a typical 8-spot pay table pays nothing at all for catching 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 — which together account for over 95% of tickets. Most keno tickets are decided the moment the fifth ball fails to match.
Why the edge is 25-30%
Take a representative 8-spot pay table paying per $1:
| Catch | Pays | Probability | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | $9 | 1.83% | $0.165 |
| 6 | $90 | 0.237% | $0.213 |
| 7 | $1,500 | 0.0160% | $0.240 |
| 8 | $25,000 | 0.000435% | $0.109 |
| Total return | $0.727 |
Return to player 72.7%, house edge 27.3%.
Compare that with the rest of the floor:
| Game | House edge | Cost per $100 wagered |
|---|---|---|
| Blackjack, basic strategy | 0.43% | $0.43 |
| Craps, pass + odds | 0.37% | $0.37 |
| Baccarat, banker | 1.06% | $1.06 |
| Roulette, American | 5.26% | $5.26 |
| Slots, typical | 5–10% | $5–10 |
| Keno | 25–30% | $25–30 |
A dollar wagered on keno costs roughly sixty times what a dollar wagered on blackjack costs.
Why it does not feel that expensive
Two structural reasons, both worth naming.
It is slow. A live keno lounge draws every four or five minutes. At $1 a ticket, 27% house edge and twelve games an hour, the expected cost is about $3.24 an hour — less than a $10 blackjack bettor loses at 0.43%, because they are wagering $600 an hour and you are wagering $12. Keno is astronomically expensive per dollar and cheap per hour, as long as the stake stays small.
Video keno breaks that. A machine plays at slot-machine speed — hundreds of games an hour. At $1 a game and 300 games an hour, the same 27% edge costs $81 an hour. Same game, same pay table, twenty-five times the cost. Speed is the variable that matters.
Reading a pay table
Pay tables differ substantially between casinos, and the difference is real money.
- Compare the same pick size across venues. An 8-spot table paying 90 for a 6-catch and one paying 75 are not close.
- Look at the mid-range catches, not the top prize. For an 8-spot ticket, catching 5 and 6 contributes more to the return than catching 8 does. Casinos advertise the top prize because it is the one nobody collects.
- Way tickets and combination tickets split one wager across several groups. They change the distribution of outcomes, never the edge — each component is priced off the same table.
- Progressive keno occasionally reaches a jackpot large enough to push the return over 100%. This is rare, published, and immediately crowded.
What does not work
- Hot and cold numbers. Every ball is equally likely on every draw. The board showing recent frequencies is a record, not a forecast.
- Playing the same numbers every game. Identical expectation to changing them.
- Consecutive numbers, birthdays, patterns on the card. No effect. The draw does not know what your card looks like.
- Picking 20 spots. The pay tables for large picks are among the worst on the board, and catching zero of twenty is a paying outcome on some of them precisely because it is nearly as unlikely as catching them all.
If you play
Keep the stake small and the pace slow. Live keno at $1 a game is genuinely inexpensive entertainment per hour. Video keno at machine speed is one of the fastest ways to lose money available in a casino, and it looks identical on the screen.
See also: house edge across every game.