Massachusetts Keno: Can you actually win? | The Curiosity Desk

Today we're talking about Keno. How do you play it? How do you know it's on the level? And most importantly, is there a secret to winning at it? Keno is a lottery game with roots in ancient China and at some bars and convenience stores around these parts, is also a way of life. -I'm a degenerate gambler. I love the spice. -I love Keno, and I love to play the Keno for customers. -If we go to a bar and they have Keno, we’re playing it. -Want to learn how to play? Let's go. You'll need your supplies: a Keno slip, a pencil and some cash. First, you decide how many numbers you want to play. This is called a spot game. Playing seven numbers, you are playing a seven spot game. -Always at three spot. -Three, four, tops. -Usually a five spot. -I just play nine spot. -I play 12 numbers. -Next, you pick how much you want to bet and how many games you want to play. -Three spots, 20 bucks a game, five games. -Then you pick your actual numbers from one through 80. -Three is my birthday, 19 is hers. -I scramble my numbers around all the time. -I’m an 11, 25, 57 kind of a guy, you know? My mother's birthday. -Finally, you head to the cashier or automated kiosk, pay up, and it's game time. -Thank you. Good luck. -Thank you. -Thank you. Good luck. -Thank you. Games happen every three to four minutes from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. In each game, 20 numbers are drawn at random. If enough of those numbers are your numbers, you win. I'll take it all in just the one five, thank you very much. For example, in a four spot game where you wagered a dollar, two correct numbers wins you a buck, three, right gets you $4, and all four will win you $100. I got 11 out of 12 numbers, so I won $25,000. -Played a little golf this morning, played a little Keno, I'm down about $1200 today, you know? -The more numbers you play and the more of them you get right, the more you win, up to $1,000,000 for 12 out of 12, which just happened for the first time in Massachusetts Lottery history. A player in Pittsfield picked numbers one through 12 and they all came up. Wait, one through 12 was selected randomly. Randomly? -I do believe it's rigged. -You can get paranoid sometimes. -It’s a scam, bro, it's all a scam. The house always wins, you know what I mean? What do you want me to say? -We are based on integrity... security and integrity of our games. -I met up with Mass. Lottery spokesman Christian Teja at the lottery headquarters. -If our games are not secure and not on the up and up, then we would be nothing. -And Keno is a significant chunk of the lottery’s business. Millions of dollars are wagered each day on hundreds of games that play out simultaneously on thousands of screens. -There are two computer systems involved in a Keno drawing. -The first one is the central gaming system, which essentially runs the game. -So all the terminals that you see at retail locations throughout the state, those wagers are processed through a central gaming system. And that is also the system that eventually determines which tickets are winners. -The second is the random number generator. -The random number generator is constantly picking sets of 20 numbers. multiple times per second. And then when it gets the message that the wagering has closed on a specific Keno draw, whatever group of 20 numbers that was selected at that moment, those are the ones that are sent over to the central gaming system. -And crucially... -The random number generator has no idea what numbers are being played for any given drawing. -And with a game like Keno, you can essentially control how much total money players win over time by how you design the payouts. Massachusetts Keno is structured so that about 70% of all of the money that comes in will pay back out to players in the form of winnings, which means... -The lottery can get 30% of your money in the long run by being honest. -Okay, fine. Is there a way to beat it? Or at the very least, improve your chances of a win? Plenty of folks have a strategy. -A lot of people, when they're betting Keno, look for patterns. They make pretty pictures on the bet slip, or they pick all the multiples of seven because that's supposed to be lucky. -But at the end of the day, there is a cold, hard certainty in the mathematics of randomness. -There is no strategy that will change the chance of winning. All 20 number combinations are equally likely. -That said, for folks who are okay with very modest winnings... -The pick two game in Massachusetts has the highest chance of winning, in part because Massachusetts pick two pays off even if you only match one number. But it's not going to make you rich. -You can get kind of rich winning a ten, 11 or 12 spot game, but the state has a cap on the total payout. So even if you do somehow get all of the numbers, if enough other people do as well, you might not actually win the full amount. -Figure out what other people do and then do something else. For example, if people are picking numbers based on birthdays, and a lot of them do, all their numbers are going to be 1 to 31. Forget what they told you in kindergarten, sharing is not good here. -Bollman's favorite strategy when he's in a bar restaurant that has Keno? He picks his two favorite numbers, six and 28, solely in his mind. -And I watch the game, and every time those numbers don't come up, I think I've saved a dollar. -Our thanks to Emerson College for their support of The Curiosity Desk. Don't risk missing our next episode, hit that subscribe button, and in the meantime, check out one of our favorite recent episodes.