Odds
Keno payouts are based on how many numbers the player chooses and how many numbers are "hit", multiplied by the proportion of the player's original wager to the "base rate" of the paytable. Typically, the more numbers a player chooses and the more numbers hit, the greater the payout, although some paytables pay for hitting a lesser number of spots. For example, it is not uncommon to see casinos paying $500 or even $1,000 for a “catch” of 0 out of 20 on a 20 spot ticket with a $5.00 wager. Payouts vary widely from casino to casino. Most casinos allow paytable wagers of between 1 and 20 numbers, but some limit the choice to only 1 through 10, 12 and 15 numbers, or "spots" as keno aficionados call the numbers selected.
The probability of a player hitting all 20 numbers on a 20 spot ticket is approximately 1 in 3.5 quintillion (1 in 3,535,316,142,212,180,000 to be exact). If every person now alive played one keno game every single second of their lives, there would be about one solid 20 jackpot-winning ticket to date. If all these possible keno tickets were laid end to end, they would span the Milky Way galaxy—and only one of them would be a winner. To this day, there are no reports of a keno player lucky enough to match all 20 numbers.
Even though it is virtually impossible to hit all 20 numbers on a 20 spot ticket, the same player would typically also get paid for hitting “catches” 0, 1, 2, 3, and 7 through 19 out of 20, often with the 17 through 19 catches paying the same as the solid 20 hit. Some of the other paying "catches" on a 20 spot ticket or any other ticket with high "solid catch" odds are in reality very possible to hit:
| Hits | Odds |
|---|---|
| 0 | 1 in 843.380 (0.11857057%) |
| 1 | 1 in 86.446 (1.15678605%) |
| 2 | 1 in 20.115 (4.97142576%) |
| 3 | 1 in 8.009 (12.48637168%) |
| 4 | 1 in 4.877 (20.50318987%) |
| 5 | 1 in 4.287 (23.32807380%) |
| 6 | 1 in 5.258 (19.01745147%) |
| 7 | 1 in 8.826 (11.32954556%) |
| 8 | 1 in 20.055 (4.98618021%) |
| 9 | 1 in 61.420 (1.62814048%) |
| 10 | 1 in 253.801 (0.39401000%) |
| 11 | 1 in 1,423.822 (0.07023351%) |
| 12 | 1 in 10,968.701 (0.00911685%) |
| 13 | 1 in 118,084.920 (0.00084685%) |
| 14 | 1 in 1,821,881.628 (0.00005489%) |
| 15 | 1 in 41,751,453.986 (0.00000240%) |
| 16 | 1 in 1,496,372,110.872 (0.00000007%) |
| 17 | 1 in 90,624,035,964.712 |
| 18 | 1 in 10,512,388,171,906.553 |
| 19 | 1 in 2,946,096,785,176,811.500 |
| 20 | 1 in 3,535,316,142,212,173,800.000 |
Odds change significantly based on the number of spots that are picked on each ticket.
Read more about this topic: Keno
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