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As in many games that are based on lottery principles, in Keno wins of the player depend mostly on chance. The chances of winning at Keno are worse than in any of the games, and the casino’s edge, on the opposite, is the maximum. This is because a player does not influence the process, he just selects several numbers between 1 and 20 and then hopes that the balls selected would match the ones drawn. The amount won depends on how many numbers would match.
There is no universal strategy to play Keno as the player can’t influence the game in any way and can’t determine the odds of having a number selected. There are some basic recommendations, based on which it is possible to build your own personal – and frequently very successful – strategies for playing Keno.
The basic principles of the game
- Select less numbers. Statistics shows that the odds of winning are higher if you select three numbers from a pool of twenty are greater than if you select five numbers out of twenty. This is the simplest base principle of playing Keno as selecting less numbers to play means less numbers need to match the drawn numbers. There are some strategies that disagree with this principle, though.
- Vary the bets. Keno allows the player to place different bets and combinations of bets. So try different types of bets and different combinations while playing Keno. This strategy is particularly important after a series of losses.
- Stick to the numbers – the simplest and most common strategy of playing Keno is to place the bets on the same numbers game after game.
Krigman strategi for Keno
Strictly speaking, it's not possible to call Alan Krigman’s (famous mathematician, and an author of several books on game theory and the odds of winning) theory an effective winning strategy. However, he managed to determine some factors that influence the odds of winning, and it's necessary to take these into account, when you play the game and place the bets.
According to Krigman, the odds of winning depend on the number of balls selected (numbers selected). The dependencies are as follows:
- If you select just one number, the odds of winning are 25%;
- When selecting two numbers, the odds of having both drawn are 6%, one of two drawn – 38%
- For three numbers, the odds for all three drawn are 1.4%, for two – 13.9%, for one number drawn – 43.1%
- For four numbers, the odds of having all four drawn are 0.3%, three drawn – 4.3%, two drawn – 21.3%, and one drawn – 43.3%
As you can see, Krigman's strategy for Keno is to select as many numbers, as possible, and thus to increase the odds of having at least one of those drawn.
Most common Keno myths
As we said previously, there're no universal strategies for Keno, which would guarantee winning in the long run or at least significantly increased the chances of generating profit. However, there are a lot of myths about Keno – and all of these have nothing in common with reality.
The most common myth in Keno is that you need to place bets on those numbers that were not drawn during several last draws. This is logically similar to trying to win a jackpot on a playing machine that hasn’t been giving any wins for some time. The idea behind it is that if the numbers have not been drawn recently, they would be drawn when you bet on these, and, as a result, you will eventually win. Of course, this is not confirmed either mathematically or logically – and is simply a superstition. There's also another, opposite superstition: some players recommend to bet on those numbers, which were frequently drawn during the last games.
Another common popular, but, alas, inefficient strategy is to bet on drawing 'lucky numbers.' Of course, statistically there's no way to determine how lucky any number is, and the numbers in Keno don’t have such property. But many players place bets on the numbers they consider to be 'lucky,' like 10 and 11 or 23 and 24.
