How To Choose Winning Keno Numbers

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Many players find their keno winning sweet spot somewhere around the 6 to 10 number mark. Most keno variations let you pick anywhere between 1 and 15 numbers. Aside from numbers, there may also be. Unlike bingo, keno players have the freedom to choose the numbers for each card. How to Play keno. You decide how much you wish to bet on a particular round, and how many numbers you wish to choose. You can choose between 1 and 20 numbers, the payouts vary depending on how many numbers you pick and how many of them get drawn.

How many keno numbers should you pick? Most keno games allow you to choose 1 to 15 spots (numbers). You might also find special games that allow a lot more numbers to be chosen. The numbers of spots you pick doesn’t affect the cost of your bet. The more you pick the better your chances that at least some of them will be drawn out. Massachusetts Lottery's official game catalog.

Today, you can play keno in almost every US state that allows this type of gambling. You can choose to purchase a ticket at your local keno retailer, or you can find the game in a casino, either land-based or online.

In this article, we will be talking about the most common numbers in Keno, the mathematical chances of winning in a keno game, and the numbers people usually choose. Let’s start!

Which Numbers Do People Usually Choose when Playing Keno?

Everybody has their own lucky numbers. Whether it’s an important date in your life, like a birthday or an anniversary, or just some numbers that you consider to be your lucky ones, people usually have a lot of superstitions when playing keno.

This works both ways, as players also often avoid specific numbers. The numbers 6, 13, and 66 are generally considered bad luck, so people stay away from those in most cases. But in China, for example, people often choose the number 6 because it represents wealth, number 8 that is also connected to wealth and prosperity, and number 9 that stands for the Chinese emperor. In the US, number 7 is considered a lucky one, and because keno numbers go up to 80, people also often pick 77.

But do the numbers that you choose actually matter? Are there numbers that get drawn more frequently than others?

Most Frequent Winning Numbers

hot, while the ones that have a lower frequency of occurrence are referred to as cold.

While you can base your guesses on the frequency of numbers in previous draws, nothing guarantees you a win. The fact that some numbers get drawn more frequently than others is the product of pure randomness. While many keno players believe in the hot/cold strategy, that is rarely going to be beneficial to them.

This is also referred to as the Gambler’s Fallacy. People tend to believe that if a certain number comes up more frequently that it’s more likely to come up again, when in reality, all numbers have an equal chance to get drawn despite of the previous draws.

Nevertheless, Keno has 80 numbers, and their draws are not always evenly distributed. One website from New Zealand calculated that the number 27 is the most common Keno number in that country, being drawn 25.74% of the time. Close behind is number 12 with 25.65%. The number 17 seems to be rarest, as it only showed up 23.70% of the time, or 343 times less than the “hot” 27.

In the last 14 years of Keno draws in Hungary, statistics show that the most common pairs are 47 and 66. The number 47 also shows 9 more times in combination with other numbers in the top 20 pairs list. Interestingly enough, 1 and 2 are the second most frequent pair in Keno draws in Hungary.

Keno stats for Washington Lottery in the US suggest that the numbers 75, 29, 53, 65, and 42 are the most common ones (at the time of this post).

So, as you see, there’s not much of a rule when it comes to Keno numbers. Some are more frequent than others, sure, but not by that much.

The Math Behind Keno

The chances of you guessing one number out of 80 are 0.25%, which makes keno one of the most difficult gambling games to win. Depending on how and under which rules you play the game, the casino edge for keno can be between 40% and a massive 70%.

If you’re playing keno through the state lottery, the numbers will get picked from a rotating drum. Keno balls are all the same, which eliminates any chances that some numbers have a better probability to get drawn than others.

If you’re playing the game in an online casino, instead of the drum, the game will use a random number generator for the draws. That is a computer-based system that doesn’t use any recognizable patterns for drawing numbers. If a game is RNG-certified, that guarantees that the outcomes are fair to all players.

If you’re hoping for the highest payout in keno, which is guessing 10 out of 10 numbers, you should know that the chances for that happening are one in 10 million, making keno one of the most unlikely gambling games in which you could win a jackpot.

The calculations further show that the best chance of winning money back in keno is by playing the 6-spot game where the house edge is around 43%. On the other hand, playing the 10-spot game will increase the casino edge to 70%, making it the most difficult type of keno.

Tips and Strategies for Playing Keno

Keno is based entirely on luck, as you can’t predict which numbers get drawn, although that may be contrary to your beliefs and superstitions.

Keno doesn’t require any skills whatsoever. Even if you played the game for years and never won, all players will have the same chances of winning as you with every new draw.

Don’t play keno if you’re looking to win money regularly, as there’s no such thing as a “hot streak” in this game. To be as safe as possible, play the 6-spot game since it mathematically has the highest chance of paying out.

Other than that — good luck!

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What can You Do to Win More at Keno?

Let’s say it straight away, Keno is, like any lottery, basically a guessing game. Winning keno numbers are selected completely at random. So the bottom line is that no keno strategy is ever going to be really successful at predicting what will come out.

Having said that, there are some things you can do to edge the odds in your favour. In short, our top tips for winning at keno are as follows:

Look for the best payout schedules

By analysing the payout table you can find out before you play what the expected payback over time will be. Not a clue how to do that? Well luckily, we’ve done it for you – at least if you want to play online! If you’re playing keno online the pay schedule is determined largely by what type of gaming software the casino runs on. And we’ve worked out the expected payouts on all the main software brands and listed for you which casinos run on each type.

Play the right number of spots

How many keno numbers should you pick? Most keno games allow you to choose 1 to 15 spots (numbers). You might also find special games that allow a lot more numbers to be chosen. The numbers of spots you pick doesn’t affect the cost of your bet.

The more you pick the better your chances that at least some of them will be drawn out. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have a better chance of winning because you will need to catch more of them before you win anything.

For instance, if you pick a 6-spot, in most casinos you wouldn’t win anything unless at least 3 of them were drawn. So it’s a balancing act between selecting enough numbers to give you a reasonable chance of catching a few, but not so many that you have to catch lots before you get a payout.

Regular players tend to opt for between 4 and 8 numbers. If you choose less than 4 spots, the payout schedules mean that it isn’t worth it – the payouts are relatively low and the house has too large an advantage.

If you choose more than 9 spots, the odds of all your numbers actually getting picked are so small that it’s hardly worth even trying. In the extreme case, the odds of getting 15 catches out of 15 spots are about 428 BILLION to 1 (pretty much impossible)!

If you play a high number of spots, some casinos pay out if none of them come up, but you’d need to check their schedule to make sure of this. If you’re a Jackpot hunter: On any pay schedule the BIGGEST jackpot is on maximum spots. But sadly, the more spots you pick, the more remote your chances of winning.

Play several ‘ways’

You can increase your chances of some kind of win from the set of numbers you have selected by betting on a variety of ‘ways’. If, for instance, you have selected 8 numbers as an 8-spot, you could at the same time group them as two 4-spots.

You would then have 3 separate wagers on the same set of numbers. If all 8 came up you would collect 3 lots of winnings (But of course if none of them came up you would lose all three stakes!) You should note that these multi-bet options are usually only available in live, offline keno. But we’ve found one site where you can bet several ways on the same keno draw.

Set a good wager level

How much to wager? Well it depends on such factors as what you can afford, how much the casino will allow, the details of the payout schedule.

Choose lucky numbers!

Everyone has their own superstitions and favoured methods of picking numbers. How about trying some of these:

How To Pick The Best Keno Numbers

  • try our picker.
  • family birthdays or ages (although this is likely to slant your picks towards
  • smaller numbers)
  • telephone numbers or street address numbers
  • a particular layout of numbers on the card
  • a ‘psychic feeling’ – just close your eyes and see what comes to mind
  • a ‘quick pick’ where the computer picks your numbers for you at random

How To Choose Winning Keno Numbers 2019

Numbers

How To Choose Winning Keno Numbers Online

Statistically it really shouldn’t make any difference how you pick your keno numbers – but who knows?