Keno is one of the oldest gambling games on the planet with roots stretching back all the way back to Ancient China and aside from swapping 80 Chinese symbols for numbers 1 to 80, it really hasn’t changed much in all that time.

Keno is played much like any other lotto game. Players pick a group of numbers on a card and if those numbers come up during the draw, they win according to how many match up. The key things that sets Keno apart from the rest are that players choose specifically between 1 and 80 and, most importantly, that they get to not only choose which numbers, but also how many, between 1 and 20. And, rather than just 5 or 6 numbers being drawn during a Keno draw, a whopping 20 are drawn instead.

Odds in Keno vs Generic Lotto Cards

When it comes to most lotto games, there really aren’t any particular odds that you can work with. Balls are chosen completely at random and there’s no functional difference whatsoever between picking, say, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 and 12, 17, 24, 33, and 56. Yes, you can look at which balls have dropped most often or most recently and make a so-called “informed decision” that way, but again, unless the lottery is completely rigged, each and every number has the same odds of being drawn with each and every draw.

Keno, however, has a set of very important odds to know before filling out your Keno ticket. Not that some numbers are more likely to come up during the draw than others – in this respect there’s no difference between Keno and other lottery games – but in what the optimum amount of numbers to draw is.

Take a look at the below table to see how the odds break down between how many numbers you choose and the chances of them matching.

What These Odds Mean

As you can see, the more numbers you pick, the larger the odds become, the higher your winnings are.  As such, choosing less than, say, 4 numbers may give you a higher chance of winning, but your payout will be relatively low – especially as a Keno ticket usually costs a couple of dollars, rather than, say, $500. A 4:1 payout may be very much worthwhile if the ticket cost $500, for example, but certainly not if the ticket costs between $1 and $5.

On the flip side, you’ll notice that the more numbers you pick, the more of them have to match in order to win decent prizes. Take a look at the final segment of that table and you’ll notice that getting 5 matching numbers when you pick 10 will only give you a payout of $3, whereas getting 5 matches when you only choose 6 numbers will give you a $50 payout! 

This is why, incidentally, the table only goes up to 10 numbers picked. Many Keno games only allow you to pick up to 10 numbers, but not because they don’t want to pay off in the millions of dollars (though they don’t) but because the odds get so much exponentially worse as you go along that by the time you’re picking 11 or 12 numbers, you will need to get ten matching numbers to win anything of significance. By the time you get to 20 numbers matching, we’re talking odds in the 1 in multi-quintillions, which puts it in the vicinity of significantly less than impossible. And, again, you would need to get at least 18 matching numbers to win anything of real value.

As such, most experts agree that regardless of how many numbers a particular Keno game allows you to pick, the ideal amount is always between 4 and 8 numbers – closer to 4 if you want better odds and lower payouts; closer to 8 if you want worse odds but higher winnings. 

Once you’ve decided on that, everything else is entirely up to lady luck.