Slot Intelligence Series / Vol. XVI
Keno
A technical and mathematical review of keno in every form — the Chinese pigeon ticket and Reno's racehorse keno, the Nevada lounge, video keno from Montana's bars to IGT's Game King, the fast-draw games of the state lotteries and Nebraska's municipal keno — every catch probability counted exactly, every pay table on the record priced state by state, the picking and betting systems tested, and the largest payouts on record.
Executive summary
Keno is one draw sold at many prices. Every game in this volume draws twenty numbers from eighty — 3,535,316,142,212,174,320 equally likely draws, each number one chance in four in every game — and pays a ticket on how many of its marked spots are drawn. What differs from door to door is the price list. The same draw returns 48.10% to 50.24% in Washington's once-nightly Daily Keno, about 60% to 70% in most state lotteries, 65% to 80% in a Nevada lounge, 76.03% across Nebraska's municipal keno and 85% to 95% on most video keno machines. This volume prices every table on the record and shows where each dollar goes.
The history is older than the legend, and video keno was born in Montana. The game's ancestor is the eightycharacter pigeon ticket, banned in Guangdong in 1804–05 and licensed in Macau in 1847; Stewart Culin printed its pay table in 1891, and the Han-dynasty origin story is a legend. Keno entered Nevada as "racehorse keno" at Reno's Palace Club on May 1, 1936; Montana's Supreme Court made electronic keno legal as a form of bingo in 1976, nine years before the state's video poker law; Kansas launched the first state-lottery keno on October 1, 1990; and the California Supreme Court struck down the state's banked lottery keno in 1996. Nevada repealed its $250,000 keno aggregate limit effective September 21, 2023.
Every return in this volume is computed, and the published ones reproduce. This volume's engine counts every catch probability in exact fractions and computes every pay table's return, hit rate and variance; it reproduces 292 of 293 published video keno returns across Spot, Caveman, Cleopatra, Power, Super, Triple Power, Extra Draw and Super Way Keno, and every probability in the author's earlier field manual to the printed digit. The one miss is a transcribed row whose pays cannot produce its own stated return. A register names eighteen bad figures in circulation, four of them from the author's own manual.
The state decides the lottery price, and most add-ons are priced at par. Virginia's table is the most generous in the United States, 69.38% to 75.00%; Massachusetts and New Hampshire pay about 68% to 70%; Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky print one identical table, 63.67% to 66.14% from two spots to ten and 50% on a 1-spot. New York's Extra multiplier averages exactly 2.000 for double the price, so it returns what the base game returns; Maryland's Super Bonus averages 3.309 for triple the price and Ohio's Booster 1.964 for double.
No way of choosing numbers and no betting system changes the return. Five ways of choosing an 8-spot — the same numbers every game, the hottest, the coldest, the longest absent and fresh random picks — each matched the exact distribution over a million simulated games; a martingale on Ohio's 1-spot fails 23.73% of its cycles and returns exactly the game's 50%; and five betting systems, flat betting and four progressions, each lost 25.0% of the money bet on a 75% lounge ticket. What the player controls is the table, the spot count and the bet: the best spot count falls between four and seven on 37 of 64 tables, and the 2-spot is the best ticket in six state lotteries.
Montana's $2 and $800 reprice the long tickets. Montana allows $2 a game and $800 an award, requires 80% at every bet level and caps only line games at 92%; Senate Bill 153's $4 and $1,199 failed 20 to 29 on April 3, 2025. Applied to a schedule built for an uncapped floor, the cap leaves the 2- to 4-spot tickets untouched and cuts a $2 5spot from 94.95% to 66.70%; the regulator lists Montana's keno-titled programs at minimum returns of 87.64% to 89.81%, on a route that paid $86,557,392 in machine tax in fiscal 2026.
Every keno progressive has an exact break-even meter, and few reach it. The Mega 10 ticket breaks even at $8,605,379.94 and stood at $4,924,669 on October 2, 2026, a return of 72.47%; Michigan's The Jack needs $861,947.95, and its record $677,141 left the add-on at 86.61%.30,31 The largest payouts are Australian; Nevada's largest came from a five-number game. Australia's Keno Mega Millions produced a reported $10.3 million in 2022, $8,861,712.20 at Gladstone on January 4, 2026, and $7,898,799.30 at Lambton in 2018; Nevada Numbers paid $6,376,452 at Sam's Town in September 2007; PT's Taverns' Giant Keno paid $305,889.44 on August 16, 2026, the largest Nevada keno award at a restricted location; and Massachusetts paid its first $1 million keno prize on a 12-spot on March 22, 2023.
The lounge is shrinking; the lottery game is not. Nevada's live keno ran 40 units at 30 locations and won $16.27 million in the twelve months to July 2026 at 28.24%, about a tenth of one percent of the state's gaming win; Massachusetts sold $1.285 billion of keno in fiscal 2025, Nebraska's municipal keno took $337,697,690 in wagers, and Australia's Keno earned A$374.0 million of revenue.
Keno is Class III under federal law, and its tax line moved in 2026. Federal regulations name keno among the casino games of Class III, so a tribe needs a compact to offer it; casino keno is exempt from regular withholding, and from January 1, 2026 a keno win is reported when one game's winnings less its wager reach $2,000, up from $1,500.37,38,39 Twenty-one states and the District run lottery keno; Arizona's "Quick Draw" is not keno, Indiana's Quick Draw is a 10-spot game drawn twice a day, and Washington draws its Daily Keno once a night.
The "due" number is perceived progression; the progressive meter is real. Hot, cold and overdue boards record only the draws already made, and each number is drawn next with probability one in four whatever the board shows; the only keno displays that carry real state are progressive meters, which carry value, and Ultimate X Keno's multipliers, which carry to the next game (Appendix C).
$1.285 billion MASSACHUSETTS KENO SALES, FY2025 $10.3 million LARGEST KENO PRIZE REPORTED, 2022 (AUD)
What the volume covers
Section 1 is the orientation: one draw, seven channels and the parties that run them. Here a spot is a number marked on a ticket; a catch is a spot that is drawn; a rate is the price a lounge charges for a ticket or a way; a return is what a pay table gives back per dollar over the long run; and a channel is the setting the game is sold in — lounge, video, route, lottery, municipal, online or abroad. Section 2 is the dated record, from the pigeon ticket to the repeal of Nevada's aggregate limit; Section 3 the equipment; Section 4 the rules of every ticket and variant; Section 5 the mathematics — the exact distribution, the return of every table on the record, the picking and betting tests and a register of bad figures; Section 6 the census. Sections 7 to 10 cover the progressives and the records, the bet and its caps, the market and the law, state by state. Appendix A grades the sources, Appendix B shows every calculation, and Appendix C answers the persistent-state question. SIS 26-KN · Keno
Independent research by Lost Cabin Consulting LLC, not published, endorsed or reviewed by any game maker; game names belong to their owners. Gambling carries real risk of loss, and nothing here promises a win. Play only where it is legal and you are of age. If gambling stops being fun, call 1-800-GAMBLER. See the disclaimer.
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