The draw is fixed, the price is not
Pick eight numbers. These are the chances that a given number of them come up, and they are the same in every casino in the world:
| Your hits | Probability | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 8.150370% | 1 in 12 |
| 5 | 1.830259% | 1 in 55 |
| 6 | 0.236671% | 1 in 423 |
| 7 | 0.016046% | 1 in 6,232 |
| 8 | 0.000435% | 1 in 230,115 |
Hitting all eight is a 1 in 230,115 event. What that is worth to you depends entirely on what the board pays for it, and that is the number that changes from casino to casino while the odds above never do.
Almost every ticket is worthless
The table above prices the outcomes people talk about. This is the one they do not: on the pay table shown, a ticket pays something on 2.0834% of draws. 97.92% of tickets return nothing at all. Not a small win, not a partial refund. Nothing.
That is the real texture of the game and it is not a criticism of it. Keno is a lottery sold at casino pace, and a lottery ticket is worthless almost every time by design. It is worth knowing before you decide how long an evening you want.
Where the return actually comes from
The board advertises 25,000. Here is what each pay line contributes to the 72.7052% the table returns:
| Outcome | Pays | Probability | Share of the return |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 hits | 9 to 1 | 1.8302586% | 22.66% |
| 6 hits | 90 to 1 | 0.2366714% | 29.30% |
| 7 hits | 1,500 to 1 | 0.0160455% | 33.10% |
| 8 hits | 25,000 to 1 | 0.0004346% | 14.94% |
The jackpot everyone is playing for supplies under a sixth of what the game gives back. The seven-hit line, which no sign is printed about, supplies twice as much. This is the same pattern as the royal flush line on the Trips bet, where the headline payout contributes 0.2% of the return: the biggest number on the felt is doing advertising, not arithmetic.
Catching every number, at every pick size
Below is the complete table, which is fixed everywhere in the world. The last column is what a casino would have to pay for that outcome alone to make the bet fair, and it is the number to hold the board against.
| Spots picked | Chance of catching all | Roughly | Fair payout |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25.000000000% | 1 in 4 | 4 to 1 |
| 2 | 6.012658228% | 1 in 17 | 17 to 1 |
| 3 | 1.387536514% | 1 in 72 | 72 to 1 |
| 4 | 0.306339230% | 1 in 326 | 326 to 1 |
| 5 | 0.064492470% | 1 in 1,551 | 1,551 to 1 |
| 6 | 0.012898494% | 1 in 7,753 | 7,753 to 1 |
| 7 | 0.002440256% | 1 in 40,979 | 40,979 to 1 |
| 8 | 0.000434566% | 1 in 230,115 | 230,115 to 1 |
| 9 | 0.000072428% | 1 in 1,380,688 | 1,380,688 to 1 |
| 10 | 0.000011221% | 1 in 8,911,711 | 8,911,711 to 1 |
Two things fall out of it. Picking more numbers does not improve your chances of a full catch, it destroys them: going from four spots to ten takes a 1 in 326 shot to 1 in 8,911,711. And the fair payout for catching all eight is 230,115 to 1 against the 25,000 the table pays, which is a ninth of true odds on the outcome the game is sold on.
Why keno is priced the way it is
At 27.2948% on the table above, keno is roughly ten times the cost of single-zero roulette and fifty times blackjack played correctly. Even Big Six, the most expensive wheel on the floor, is cheaper.
That is not a scandal, it is the trade the game offers: a very small stake against a very large multiple, played at a pace that lets you sit with a drink. It is priced as a lottery because it is one. The useful habit is simply to read the board before playing, since the board is the entire difference between one keno game and another.
What to check on the board
- The payout for hitting most of your spots, not all of them. The top prize is where attention goes and almost never where the value is.
- Whether the table pays anything for a low number of hits on a large pick, which is where some tables recover a little of their cost.
- The maximum aggregate payout, which can cap a large win regardless of what the board advertises.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the house edge in keno?
- It depends on the pay table rather than the game. The draw is fixed and fair; the payouts are the casino's choice. A widely published 8-spot table paying 9, 90, 1,500 and 25,000 costs 27.2948%.
- What are the odds of hitting all 8 numbers in keno?
- 1 in 230,115 when you pick eight and twenty are drawn from eighty. That probability is the same everywhere; only the payout differs.
- Is there a strategy for keno?
- Only choosing where you play. The numbers you pick make no difference, and the pay table makes all of it.
Every figure on this page is computed by
side_games_math.py at build time and checked against the
figures the industry publishes before the page is written. Where a
number depends on the casino's own pay table, that is said rather than
averaged away. Last computed August 2026.