The more numbers you play, and the more of them you get right, the more you win - up to a million dollars for 12 out of 12, which just happened for the first time in Massachusetts Lottery history in March 2023. The payouts for each winning scenario are listed on the back of the Keno betting slip.įor example, in a four-spot game where you wagered $1, two correct numbers win you a buck, three right gets you $4, and all four will win you $20. How many numbers you must get correct to win - and how much money each win earns you - depends on how many numbers you played, and how much you wagered. If enough of those numbers are your numbers, you win.

In each game, 20 numbers are drawn at random. For example, playing 10 games at $1 per game will cost you $10.įinally, you head to the cashier or automated kiosk, pay up and it’s game time.Ībout 300 games happen every day, every three to four minutes, from 5 a.m to 1 a.m. Next you decide how much you want to bet on each game - from $1 to $30 - and how many total games you want to play, up to 20 on one slip. Then you pick the numbers you want to play, from 1 through 80. This is called a “spot game.” Playing seven numbers? You’re playing a seven-spot game. You begin by deciding how many numbers you want to try, picking between two and 12 numbers. To play, you just need three things, two-thirds of which are provided for you at any location where Keno is available: A Keno slip, a pencil (or pen) and some cash. To answer that, we need to first understand how Keno is played, and how the state lottery runs the game. Lottery doesn’t have software that calculates what numbers to release that would result in a minimum payout overall?” who reached out to GBH's Curiosity Desk with a question: The game has also been a source of curiosity for Dan McCarthy from Burlington, Mass. “And at the end of the night we cash in our tickets and whatever we make goes towards the bill.”

“Just for the fun alone, we do it,” she said. “I love to come in and play my numbers.”Īt the nearby restaurant Shanghai Moon 1987, Marilyn Smith said that she and her two daughters have been meeting every Wednesday for the past seven years for dinner, drinks and Keno. “I’ve been playing since I was 19, and that’s a long, long, long time ago,” said Fran Martins at the Daily Mart in Medford. At some bars and corner stores around these parts, it's also a way of life. Keno is a lottery game with roots in ancient China, whose name is a nod to Latin.

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