Keno odds, worked out for every ticket

Keno odds for 1 to 10 spots

Your chance of catching every number you pick falls fast: 1 in 4 for one spot, 1 in 326 for four, and 1 in 8,911,711 for ten. The game draws 20 balls from 80, so each number you pick has exactly a 25% chance of coming up, and the odds for every catch follow from that.

Pay tables from Wizard of Odds' spot keno analysis; we recalculated every return from the exact catch probabilities and they match to two decimal places. The last column is the one that surprises people. On a 10-spot ticket with Pay Table 7, 93.5% of draws pay nothing at all, because that table only starts paying at five catches.

Why is the keno house edge so high?

Keno's house edge is set entirely by the pay table, and keno tables are cut further below the true odds than almost any other casino game's. A generous video keno table keeps about 5% of every stake; a tight one keeps about 15%; live keno lounges have kept 20% to 35%.

Those live figures come from Wizard of Odds' surveys: Las Vegas live keno games returned 65% to 80% in 2001, and Laughlin's returned 50% to 74% in 2012. Video keno is kinder but not kind. A 2017 study by Michael Shackleford, reported by the Las Vegas Advisor, put the average video keno return on the Strip at 89.97%, against 97.01% for video poker in the same casinos.

For scale, every standard bet on a single-zero wheel carries a 2.70% edge (see the roulette odds calculator). Even the best keno table above costs nearly twice that per pound, and a tight one more than five times as much.

How many numbers should you pick in keno?

On a single pay table, the number of spots changes how often you win far more than it changes the house edge. On Pay Table 7, a 4-spot ticket returns 94.78% and a 10-spot ticket 93.20%, but the 4-spot pays something on 25.89% of draws and the 10-spot on just 6.47%.

So the choice is mostly about the shape of your session. Fewer spots means smaller, more regular wins. More spots means long dry runs with a remote chance of a five-figure multiple. Two traps stand out in the tables: a 1-spot ticket returns only 75% on every Wizard of Odds table that offers one, and a 2-spot on Pay Table 4 returns 84.18%, worse than its own 3-spot. Pay tables are set spot by spot, so the only way to know is to check each one in the calculator.

Do hot and cold numbers work in keno?

No. In 200,000 simulated draws, a ticket made of the 10 "hottest" numbers from the previous 100 draws caught 2.498 numbers on average, the 10 "coldest" caught 2.499, and a random ticket caught 2.497. Pure chance predicts 2.5.

The rarer outcomes tell the same story. Five or more catches, where a 10-spot ticket starts paying, came up on 6.44% of hot tickets, 6.47% of cold ones and 6.47% of random ones, against an exact figure of 6.47%. Each draw in a certified keno game comes from a random number generator that has no memory of earlier draws, which is what the Gambling Commission's RTS 7 standard requires. The history board on screen is decoration. Our roulette tracker test found exactly the same thing on a wheel.

Our 100-draw keno sessions, simulated

Across 100,000 sessions of 100 draws at £1, a 10-spot ticket on the generous Pay Table 7 lost £6.25 on average, but the median session lost £42 and only 21.42% finished ahead. Averages in keno are propped up by rare big wins, so most sessions do worse than the house edge suggests.

A better table roughly halved the average loss, which is why it's worth checking. It didn't make a typical evening feel better, though. Table 1 pays your stake back when you catch nothing, which softens the median, while Table 7 saves its money for bigger catches. We also checked the maths behind every figure on this page with one million simulated 10-spot draws: five or more catches came up 6.50% of the time against an exact 6.47%, 122 tickets caught eight or more, and none caught all ten. The method, code and full results are on the casino simulations page.

Online keno in the UK must show its pay table

Under the Gambling Commission's RTS 3 standard, a UK-licensed keno game must show you its pay table, and its house edge, RTP or the probability of winning, before you bet. That means every number the calculator needs is already on the game's help screen.

If you can't find a pay table or an RTP, that tells you something too. Check the operator on the Gambling Commission public register before depositing. A UK licence also means you can block every licensed gambling site at once through GAMSTOP, the free national self-exclusion scheme, if keno or anything else stops being fun.

Keno predictors and the AI around the draw

An app that claims to predict keno numbers has nothing to work with, because the 20 balls come from a certified random number generator with no pattern to learn. Our hot-and-cold test above is effectively what any "keno predictor" does, and it scored the same as picking at random.

AI does run around online keno, just not inside the draw. Operators use machine learning to spot bots and linked accounts, as covered on the fraud detection page, and to flag fast, high-volume play that can signal harm, which is what responsible gambling AI looks for. Video keno lets you play draw after draw with no wait, so it's exactly the kind of game those systems watch.

Checking a keno game before you play

Five minutes with the help screen tells you more than any strategy.

1. Open the game's rules or help page and find the pay table for the number of spots you like to play.
2. Pick "My game's own pay table" in the calculator, enter each pay, and read the return. Anything under 90% is a steep price.
3. Try neighbouring spot counts on the same game. Returns can differ by several points between, say, 2 and 3 spots.
4. Set a budget for the session and check how long it's likely to last with the bankroll calculator.