5 Amazing Keno Secrets No One Tells You About

If you have ever played keno, you would know what it is all about. The original lottery game, keno, has been wagered for hundreds of years. Do you know that this simple number draw guessing game is older than every other casino game on the floor? Here are 5 Amazing Keno Secrets.

Fittingly enough for a game with so much history behind it, keno also holds many secrets that most players simply don’t know about.

If you’re interested in learning more about how keno really works and why it appeals to so many players worldwide, look no further than this list of five little-known keno secrets no one tells you about.

5 Amazing Keno Secrets

1 – Keno was invented by a Chinese warlord strapped for cash

Way back in the year, 200 B.C.E. Cheung Leung faced a serious dilemma. The Chinese warlord was facing an imminent invasion from rival forces, and unless he could form an army to defend his city, he would likely without a head. This is one of the 5 Amazing Keno Secrets.

Under the circumstances of generating a quick and effective way to raise funds for his armed forces but unwilling to impose forced taxes on his already put-upon people, Leung directed his wisest counselors to come up with a solution. They eventually came up with a gambling game known as pai-ko p’iao, which was essentially what you and I know as a lottery today.

Citizens of the city were encouraged to purchase playing Keno cards outfitted with 80 squares and 20 specialized symbols. Leung conducted a royal draw to pull 20 symbols randomly, and whoever showed up to turn in the card holding the most “catches” was rewarded with food, livestock, and other valuable resources.

This becomes a daily ritual, and while the vast majority of people collected nothing on their wager, one lucky winner emerged each day.

But the real winner was Leung, who quickly amassed the treasure needed to compensate his armies and defend the city.

Though there are no clear connections between pai-ko p’iao and modern-day keno, the 80-number gambling game remained a staple in China and throughout Asia, and in the 19th century, immigrants arriving in California brought what the locals dubbed “Chinese Lottery” along for the ride.

Soon after like all cultural imports, the Chinese Lottery was tweaked until keno as it’s played today was born.

2 – Online keno is no a one size fits all affair

When you hop online to visit your favorite online casino site, the keno menu can be a beautiful sight to look at. This is one of the 5 Amazing Keno Secrets.

Presenting far more options than your typical casino keno parlor, or even one of the modern video keno machines, online keno sites make a point to expand the game’s horizons.

The popular Golden Egg Keno game, for example, lets players earn free games when they correctly catch a specially designated “golden number.” And in Last Blast Keno, catching the last number drawn on the draw is good for a sweet 4x multiplier on your overall payout.

Popular Online Keno Games

3 – You can become a millionaire playing Progressive Keno Jackpots

For a long time, keno was played for fixed jackpots that averaged $25,000 for landing a perfect 8-, 9-, or 10-spot card.

But today at some point, players realized that the ridiculous odds against — it’s a 1 in 8.9 million shot to nail all 10 numbers — made capped payouts like that a great deal.

Rather than lose lucrative keno action to lower house edge games like video poker, the casinos initiated that fan favorite’s prized element — progressive jackpots.

Today, you can take home $1.9 million like one lucky winner at the Atlantis Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, did back in June of 2017. The Atlantis is known as a keno hotspot thanks to the venue’s 9-spot progressive jackpot option for $1.50 per play.

The seven-figure progressive prize is linked to Mega Keno, a popular jackpot network found in casinos across the country that rises even higher.

4 – NetEnt online casinos offer the best keno odds on the Internet

Net Entertainment (NetEnt) is the best keno provider with a 93.80% payback rate — which is more than 20% better than some of the lower-ranking sites.

While the brick and mortar casinos are offering average keno payback rates of only 65% to 80% to its players, adding an extra 10% payback equity to your ledger by playing keno online offers a huge helping hand.

5 – Getting a perfect 20-Spot card is impossible

For recreational gamblers living anywhere in Australia, their benchmark for longshot odds likely comes from the Powerball lottery.

Winning the absurd billion-dollar jackpots paid out so often by Powerball requires the player to beat odds of 1 in 292,201,338.

It can’t compare to the infinitesimal chances keno players have of landing a perfect 20-spot card.

With 80 numbers to choose from and a 20/20 draw needed to claim the game’s largest payout — one casinos doesn’t even bother to calculate because they’ve never been won — a 20-spot card clocks in at a 1 in 3,535,316,142,212,174,320 chance.

It means hitting 20-spot is 12 billion times harder than cashing in that giant Powerball paycheck.

Synopsis

The game is easy to learn and entertaining also when lady luck is looking in your direction. A small stake of only a few bucks can be parlayed into big winnings when you catch a bunch of numbers. And the pace of play ensures you won’t be stuck sitting at a table waiting for dealers and fellow gamblers to make their move.

On the flip side, keno offers by far the worst odds on any casino floor, making it quite tough to eke out a profit over the long run. Keno can also be a bit boring if you prefer skill-based gambling.

This duality is what makes keno such a fun game, and now that you know five of its most closely guarded secrets, making sense of its intricacies should be a breeze.