The popular lottery-style game of keno is thought to have originated somewhere in China, but is now enjoyed online and in casinos worldwide. Simple to learn but difficult to master, keno attracts players of all levels, from recreational gamer’s right through to professional gamblers with a knack for playing the odds. There is one element that can work to deter the amateur gamer however, and that is the question of how best to calculate keno odds.
Keno players select between one and twenty ‘spots’ (numbers one through eighty), and when a series of numbers is then revealed, those that match your spots are called hits. The higher your proportion of hits per spots, the higher the odds you get and the higher your score. The real skill lies in anticipating how many hits you’re likely to get.
Pick too many spots and you’ll lower your odds, too few and you risk missing out on a high score. There are a number of formulae and algorithms one can use to calculate the exact odds in a game of keno, most of which look something like this
C(N,K) * C(80-N,20-K) p(N,K) = C(80,20)
(Where n equals the number of spots and k the number of hits)
Don’t worry if you’re finding all this maths intimidating though, because while calculating keno odds may be complicated, understanding the odds in the context of the game is actually rather simple. In the traditional approach to the game, players select a number of spots depending on which numbers are hot or cold, or how lucky they feel.
The more hits they get with the least number of spots, the higher the odds and the higher the payout. For example, if a player thought that they were likely to pick six correct numbers, they could either choose to play six spots, maximising their potential jackpot to $500, or as many as fifteen spots, increasing their chances of achieving more hits but lowering the odds so that the same six hits would award a mere $2.
So, while the question of how to calculate keno odds is a difficult one, applying those rules to the game itself is actually quite simple.




