We have taken a brief look at the vast variety of tickets possible at
keno.
However, in the final analysis, all keno tickets are created equal,
except
that some are more expensive than others. With a 25 percent house edge,
it
should be obvious that eh cheap tickets are better than the expensive
ones.
That means that way and combination tickets should be strictly avoided.
I realize that such tickets hold a fascination for many players. Part
of
this comes from the challenge to one's ingenuity to devise new,
intriguing,
ever more complex combinations. I have no quarrel with this attitude.
Devising keno tickets is no worse an avocation than doing crossword
puzzles
or fiddling with Rubik's Cube-as long as you don't bet on the things.
Keno players who wager on way and combination tickets are similar to
roulette players who try elaborate of bets on the layout, line bets
interesting column bets paralleling street bets enclosing split bets.
These
things can make really pretty patterns on the layout, but they don't
change
your chances of winning; they only increase the cost of playing. That's
a
dangerous thing to do at a gem with as great a house advantage as keno.
Players who substitute wishful thinking for rigorous analysis sometime
try
to con themselves into believing that, through sufficient
experimentation
with different keno combinations, they will eventually hit on the
magical
combination that will give them the edge over the house. If you have
really
studied this text to this point, you have too good an understanding of
how
gambling really works to believe that. You know that adding up a group
of
minuses (negative expectation bets) won't give you a positive.
Remember,
playing a combination ticket is no different from filling out a lot of
different straight tickets.
All that combination keno tickets accomplish is to increase the amount
of
money you have to bet on each game, sometimes quite drastically. It
will
increase the likelihood of winning, but the chances of wining a large
payoff
remain so small no matter what kind of ticket you play that the
difference
is almost academic. Most important, you are paying dearly for the
opportunity to improve your chances because of the awesome 25 percent
house
edge.
About the only saving grace that the game of keno has is the chance to
win a
great deal of money for a very small investment, but as soon as you
star
playing combination tickets, the investment is no longer so small. My
advice
to anyone who wants to play keno is to take a philosophical approach.
Play
the cheapest ticket that will qualify you for a substantial payoff, and
just
figure that if you are destined to win it, that one little ticket will
be
enough to do it. If you are not destined to win the big money, all the
expensive, convoluted way, combination, and king tickets in the world
won't
help.
Unlike all the other advice I have given you, this suggestion is not
strictly scientific; probability theory does not recognize fate as
factor.
The strictly scientific advice would be not to play this game because
of the
prohibitive hose P.C. However, if you are interested in the game of
keno at
all, you are obviously too much of an optimist to heed such sound
advice. So
do the next best thing. Stick to small-price tickets. Good luck; you're
going to need it in this game.
