Deal Me In: Live keno vs. video keno

Dear Mark: My favorite game is keno. Unfortunately, casinos where I play have removed the live game and have replaced it with a few video keno games spread out over the casino floor. Since video keno is now the only game in town, is it a better game than live keno? In addition, when drawing numbers, are the numbers drawn based on a random number generator like slot and video poker machines? Vicky F.

Good news, Vicky, well, sort of. The loss of flesh and blood dabbing spots is your gain, to a point. The house edge on video keno is much lower than that on a live keno game. Live, it’s approximately 28 percent, whereas with video keno it can be as low as 7.5 percent simply due to video keno’s having better pay tables.

On the other hand, with a live lounge game, you can buy a ticket for as little as a buck, drink free hooch and watch sports in cushy chairs, and the most you can lose on a game with a 28 percent house edge is about $15 an hour. When playing video keno, the speed of the game increases almost tenfold, so, that 7.5 percent casino advantage versus the 28 percent live game edge is deceiving, because your hourly loss to the house can end up being much, much higher.

This, Vicky, leads me to dole out some advice when playing the cybernetic version. First, you want to search for the highest-paying pay tables. The higher the payouts for the spots you play, the lower the house edge. Play fewer spots so the odds against hitting a winning ticket are not so astronomical. Deliberately play at a leisurely pace, because the slower you play, the less of your hard-earned money plunks into the casino’s coffers. Finally, use your slot club card to offset the losses you will experience on this negative-expectation game.

As to your second question, Vicky, like the cards displayed in video poker or the symbols of a slot machine, a random number generator determines all numbers drawn in video keno. All 80 numbers on a keno game have the same chance of being drawn.

Dear Mark: Where I play, they do not offer a full 9/6 video poker game that you often recommend. In its place, they have 9/5 and 8/6 Jacks or Better machines. Between the two, which one is better? David W.

As mentioned often in this column, the numbers used to identify Jacks or Better video poker games usually refer to the payoffs for full houses and flushes. A 9/5 machine pays 9-for-1 for a full house and 5-for-1 on a flush. An 8/6 machine would be eight for the full house and six for a flush. One machine lowers the payoff on flushes, the other the payout on full houses.

The difference in the house edge, between these two Jacks or Better variations, is so minuscule it overlooks caution on switch-hitting between the two. For the perfect basic strategy user, the 9/5 version pays 98.44 percent, while an 8/6 game returns a nickel less -- 98.39 percent. Contrast this, David, with a marquee 9/6 pay table, which returns 99.5 percent to the polished VP player.

Gambling Wisdom of the Week: “The typical gambler might not really understand the probabilistic nuances of the wheel or the dice, but such things seem a bit more tractable than, say, trying to raise a child in this lunatic society of ours.” —Arthur S. Reber, The New Gambler's Bible