Many casinos have over time been scaling back or eliminating live keno, while video keno lives on primarily in the multi-game cabinets that also tend to feature Video Poker, although some kenos still have Video Keno-specific machines too. A player wonders:
Bad game but I love Keno. Live Keno I understand with the balls, but as a video game is it totally random as live or no more than a slot game?
Bill N.
Technically the answer is both, but for the purposes of what you’re hoping to understand, it’s going to be exactly the same as live keno, just sped up given the rapid outcomes provided by Video Keno.
When it comes to slots, they’re designed with a set number of outcomes, and the payback is determined by that set number of outcomes. A Random Number Generator is utilized for randomly selecting within that range of outcomes.
As it happens, Live Keno has a set number of outcomes too, and that falls into the structure of the game: There’s 80 numbers, of which 20 are drawn each time. No number can be drawn more than once, so it’s 20 unique numbers each game. In fact, that means there’s 3,535,316,142,212,180,000 ways to draw 20 numbers out of 80.
That’s insane, but we know in practice that while 20 numbers are drawn, you pick some X number as your numbers, and the odds of winning that Keno game are based on the number of spots you pick, and the pay table structure, which is how the payback percentage is defined.
When it comes to Video Keno, the RNG takes the place of the physical ball hopper, but everything else is the same – it’s randomly selecting 20 numbers from the 80 possible numbers, with no numbers repeated. So although functionally it works like a slot in that it utilizes an RNG, the actual way the game plays out is a digital facsimile of live keno, so it works the same.
Video Poker is the same way – it operates with 52 unique cards, just as with a regular deck of cards, with shuffling and so forth randomizing the outcomes the same way a real deck would operate.
Of course, this presumes basic Keno without any sort of bonus rounds or such. There’s an increasing number of variations that water down the base pay table, but offer free spins and other slot-like offerings to rope in more players. If you want the pure Keno experience, most machines offer that as a choice as well.
So if you enjoy live Keno, Video Keno is a faster paced version of the same thing. The payback percentage tends to be higher than live Keno to counteract the faster pace, and most machines have speed controls so you can decide how fast to play it.
Thanks for the question, and best of luck on your Keno endeavors!
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