Which keno game has the best odds? Lottery, casino and crypto keno compared
Which keno game has the best odds? It depends on what you mean by odds. The chance of hitting your numbers is fixed by the format, how many numbers are in the pool and how many are drawn. What you get back for your money is set by the payout table, and that is where keno games differ most: a state lottery returns around 70% of what is bet, a land-based keno lounge about the same, and a provably fair crypto keno original 97% to 99% by the operators' own figures. This guide shows the maths for each, how to work out the return on any payout table yourself, and how to check that a crypto keno draw was fixed before you picked.
Odds of hitting vs return on your bet
Two numbers get called "keno odds" and they answer different questions:
- Hit odds: the chance of matching a given number of your picks. Pure combinatorics, the same at every casino using the same format.
- Return (RTP): the average share of each bet paid back. It depends on the payout table, and it is what separates a good keno game from a bad one.
Lottery tickets often print "overall odds", such as 1 in 3.9. That counts every prize, including ones that only give your stake back, so it says little about value. A game can have friendly overall odds and a poor return.
How keno hit odds are calculated
Keno draws without repeats, so the chance of h hits when you pick k numbers follows the hypergeometric formula: the number of ways to choose h of the drawn numbers and k minus h of the undrawn ones, divided by the number of ways to choose k from the pool.
Two formats dominate:
- Lottery and casino keno: 20 numbers drawn from 80.
- Crypto keno originals: 10 numbers drawn from 40, with 1 to 10 picks. Gamdom, Thrill, Stake and Shuffle all use the 40-number board.
The chance of hitting every pick, computed by us:
| Picks | 20 of 80: 1 in | 10 of 40: 1 in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | 4 |
| 2 | 17 | 17 |
| 3 | 72 | 82 |
| 4 | 326 | 435 |
| 5 | 1,551 | 2,611 |
| 6 | 7,753 | 18,278 |
| 7 | 40,979 | 155,363 |
| 8 | 230,115 | 1,708,993 |
| 9 | 1,380,688 | 27,343,888 |
| 10 | 8,911,711 | 847,660,528 |
Both formats draw a quarter of the board, so one and two picks come out almost the same. From three picks up, a perfect card is much rarer on 40 numbers. Our 80-number figures match the odds the Virginia Lottery prints on its keno prize chart.
Lottery keno: about 70% back
The Virginia Lottery publishes a full prize chart for $1 bets. Weighting each prize by its chance gives the return for each spot count:
| Spots | Top prize | Overall odds (printed) | Return (our calculation) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $3 | 1 in 4.0 | 75.00% |
| 2 | $12 | 1 in 16.6 | 72.15% |
| 3 | $30 | 1 in 6.6 | 69.38% |
| 4 | $100 | 1 in 3.9 | 73.52% |
| 5 | $450 | 1 in 10.3 | 69.99% |
| 6 | $1,000 | 1 in 3.0 | 72.29% |
| 7 | $2,500 | 1 in 2.8 | 71.69% |
| 8 | $10,000 | 1 in 5.2 | 72.77% |
| 9 | $50,000 | 1 in 4.6 | 72.99% |
| 10 | $100,000 | 1 in 3.9 | 69.81% |
The best spot count on that chart is the 1-spot at 75%, and the worst is the 3-spot at 69.38%. The 7-spot has the friendliest overall odds (1 in 2.8) but only a 71.69% return, because many of its "wins" are $1 back on a $1 ticket. Prizes on some tiers can become pari-mutuel under the game rules, so the top prizes are not always fixed.
Casino keno: about 70% too
Land-based keno is no better. The Nevada Gaming Control Board's 2024 figures show keno won $17.45 million statewide at a 30.31% win rate, and 29.22% on the Las Vegas Strip. Players got back roughly 70 cents of each dollar played.
Crypto keno originals: 97% to 99%
Provably fair keno at crypto casinos uses the 40-number board and much thinner margins:
- Gamdom says its Keno lets you select up to 10 numbers from a grid of 1 to 40, offers Classic, Low, Medium and High risk modes "each with custom volatility and payout tables", and places it in a group of Originals with an RTP of "around 99%".
- MetaWin's Originals hub lists its Keno at a 97% RTP.
Stake and Shuffle show the payout table in the game for each risk level and number of picks; the pages we read do not state a keno RTP. Limits matter for big hits: Thrill lists a 1,000x max multiplier and $1,000,000 max payout for Keno, and Winna sets a $407,500 max win and lowers the max bet when the multiplier is high.
So on return alone, a crypto keno original beats lottery and casino keno by a wide margin. The house still wins over time: at 99%, you lose about $1 per $100 wagered, and keno rounds are fast.
Work out the return of any keno payout table
You do not need the casino to tell you the RTP. Take the multiplier for each number of hits, multiply it by the chance of that many hits, and add the results. Here is the chance of exactly h hits on the 10-of-40 board, computed by us:
| Picks | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 75.00% | 25.00% | ||||||
| 2 | 55.77% | 38.46% | 5.77% | |||||
| 3 | 41.09% | 44.03% | 13.66% | 1.21% | ||||
| 4 | 29.99% | 44.43% | 21.42% | 3.94% | 0.23% | |||
| 5 | 21.66% | 41.65% | 27.77% | 7.93% | 0.96% | 0.04% | ||
| 6 | 15.47% | 37.13% | 32.13% | 12.69% | 2.38% | 0.20% | 0.01% | |
| 7 | 10.92% | 31.85% | 34.40% | 17.64% | 4.57% | 0.59% | 0.03% | 0.0006% |
| 8 | 7.61% | 26.47% | 34.74% | 22.24% | 7.48% | 1.33% | 0.12% | 0.0048% |
| 9 | 5.23% | 21.40% | 33.50% | 26.06% | 10.94% | 2.53% | 0.31% | 0.0196% |
| 10 | 3.54% | 16.88% | 31.07% | 28.82% | 14.71% | 4.24% | 0.68% | 0.0598% |
A worked check with the Virginia 4-spot: $100 x (1/326.4) + $5 x (1/23.1) + $1 x (1/4.70) comes to 73.5%. Do the same with the multipliers on a crypto keno screen and the result should match the operator's stated RTP. Do it for each risk level: a change of risk should move the shape of the table, not the total.
Do your numbers matter?
No. Every number on the board has the same chance in every round, and each round is drawn from new seeds, so "hot" and "cold" numbers mean nothing. What you control is variance. More picks and higher risk levels push the return into rarer, bigger hits; one or two picks keep results close to the average. Neither changes the expected loss per bet.
How a crypto keno draw is made and verified
The casino commits to a server seed by showing its hash, you set a client seed, and each bet has a nonce. At Stake and Shuffle, HMAC-SHA256 over client seed:nonce:round gives ten random floats. The first picks one of the 40 numbers, the second one of the 39 left, and so on, so no number repeats. Thrill uses HMAC-SHA512 and draws a whole number from 0 to 40 for each pick, redrawing zeros and repeats.
A worked draw with made-up seeds on a Stake-style game:
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Server seed | 3e9a51c7d0b48f26a1e5c39d7b20f84e6c1a95d3b07e2f48c6d91a3e5f0b7c24 |
| Hashed server seed | cabf7dbf1a0ccaacfb06a799b7a4e28a79c48a4ad755334eff05d93aefd56ccb |
| Client seed | lucky-otter-88 |
| Nonce | 0 |
- SHA-256 of the server seed matches the hash shown before play.
- HMAC-SHA256 over
lucky-otter-88:0:0starts6bc462ea, the float 0.420965. Times 40 is 16.8, so position 16 (counting from 0) in the list 1 to 40: 17. - The second float, 0.934036, times 39 is 36.4: position 36 of the 39 numbers left, which is 38.
- The full draw is 17, 38, 29, 8, 24, 36, 7, 22, 34 and 10.
If you had picked 7, 17, 22, 30 and 38, that is 4 hits from 5 picks, a 0.96% (1 in 104) result. Open this check in our verifier to see it run. For your own rounds, rotate your seed pair, copy the client seed and nonce, and choose Keno in the verifier with Stake, Shuffle or Thrill selected.
Where to play provably fair keno
These audited casinos list Keno among their provably fair originals:
| Casino | What you can verify |
|---|---|
| Stake, Shuffle, Thrill | Full recompute in our verifier |
| Cybet, Goated, Gamba, Winna | HMAC-SHA256 float generator like Stake's; Goated publishes its keno code |
| Cloudbet, Yeet, Degen | Own published schemes and verifiers |
| Gamdom, BC.Game, Duelbits, MetaWin | Own verifier or code sandbox; MetaWin states 97% |
| Roobet, Rainbet, BetFury, 500 Casino, Vegabet, Wild.io, Grailbet | In-game or external verification; draw mapping not in our record |
| Legendz, DEDPRZ, Lucky.fun, Chips.gg | Keno is in the originals list, but no keno method or per-game fairness guide is published |
Spribe's Keno at 1win is a third-party game; 1win's rules page sets a $10,000 max win and says nothing about how results are produced.
For the rest of a full set of originals, see Stake Originals explained and which casino games are provably fair.
Bottom line
The keno game with the best odds is the one with the best payout table, not the friendliest overall odds. Lottery and casino keno return about 70%. Provably fair crypto keno returns 97% to 99% by the operators' own figures, and you can confirm both the draw and the return yourself. Pick fewer numbers for steadier results, ignore hot numbers, and set a loss limit before you start; our responsible gambling page has the tools.
Sources
- Virginia Lottery: Keno prize chart and odds
- Nevada Gaming Control Board: 2024 Nevada gaming win, keno statewide and Strip (UNLV Center for Gaming Research copy)
- Gamdom: Gamdom Originals (Keno board, risk modes, RTP group)
- MetaWin: Originals hub (stated RTPs)
- Thrill: Thrill Originals (Keno limits)
- Thrill: provably fair game event (Keno draw)
- Shuffle: provably fair game events (Keno floats)
- Winna: max bet and max win limits on Winna Originals
- Hit odds, returns and the worked draw computed by us; casino schemes as recorded in our audits and implemented in our verifier
Key terms
- Provably fair
- A cryptographic method that lets you confirm a game result was set before your bet and left untouched afterwards.
- Return to player (RTP)
- The share of all money staked that a game is designed to return to players across a very large number of rounds.
- House edge
- The average percentage of every wager that a game is built to keep for the casino.
- Volatility
- How sharply a game's results swing: high volatility brings rare big wins, low volatility brings frequent small ones.
- Server seed
- The casino's secret random value that, together with your client seed and the nonce, decides each bet result.
- Client seed
- The player's own input to every provably fair result, set or edited by you so the casino cannot work out outcomes in advance.
- Nonce
- A bet counter that goes up by one for each wager on the same seed pair, so no two bets share a result.
- HMAC
- A hash function that takes a secret key; provably fair games run HMAC-SHA256 over the server seed, client seed and nonce.
- Random float
- A number between 0 and 1 derived from a provably fair hash, which a game formula turns into a result.
- Hashed server seed
- The SHA-256 digest of the casino's secret server seed, published before any bet as proof the seed is locked in.
- Seed rotation
- Swapping the active server seed for a fresh one, which discloses the old seed so you can verify its bets.
- SHA-256
- A cryptographic hash that maps any input to a fixed 256-bit digest; casinos use it to commit to server seeds.