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Las Vegas Gambling Tips: Video Keno - Part Six (Continued) |
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On The Town With Vegas Vic
By: Victor H. Royer
Welcome to Las Vegas! My name is Victor H. Royer, but everyone just calls me Vegas Vic. I was named after that famous neon sign in Downtown Las Vegas, that cowboy with the hat on top of the Pioneer Club, always waving his hand and beckoning to his long love, Sassy Sally, on the other side of the street. I will be writing a few articles for AccessVegas.com, so I hope you enjoy them.
Video Keno - Part Six (Continued)
Generally speaking, the traditional single-screen Spot Keno is not among the overall better-paying Video Keno games, because many of the newer versions of Video Keno -- such as the games I showed earlier, and those that follow -- pay a few percentage points more in some versions. The most liberal of the standard Spot Keno programs pays back at about 93.99%, and that makes it just a tad over a 6% house withholding percentage game. This isn't bad, considering that roulette holds 5.6%, and many blackjack players play the game so badly they face more than a 6% house edge. Many reel slot machines don't even pay back this much, particularly those outside of Nevada. So you see, even though this traditional Video Keno game may not be as good as some of its more recent versions, simply dismissing Video Keno as a "bad" game is really quite unfair, and gives the game an unnecessarily bad rap.
Nevertheless it has become the reality of the casino experience that the standard, plain, Spot Keno game just isn't as exciting as it once was, and certainly not as much so as some of its various derivatives. But the principles of this game are the core of all such Video Keno games, and that's why it is essential that we know about it, and what it means to us. All of the other pay tables and payback percentages, as well as our ability to make selections based on our understanding of the pay tables, are based on this game. Once you learn to understand this game, and how to look for the differences in the various pay tables and what they mean to your profit potential, then you will be more able to pick the better games among the others.
This becomes even more important when you get into Four Card Keno, and Multi-Card Keno, both of which I will discuss immediately after this Spot Keno section. Both of these other multi-card games are based on the Spot Keno pay tables, and by learning what they are here you will be better able to gauge the potential profitability of playing the other games. Among the various paybacks for Spot Keno, the variations are too numerous to list; I can, however, give you some parameters. Here is a listing of the top eight of the most common payback programs for regular Video Keno, known as Spot Keno:
Best payback for Spot Keno: 93.99%
Next best payback for Spot Keno: 92.43%
Third best payback for Spot Keno: 91.97%
Fourth best payback for Spot Keno: 89.65%
Fifth best payback for Spot Keno: 88.19%
Sixth best payback for Spot Keno: 87.61%
Seventh best payback for Spot Keno: 85.34%
Eighths best payback for Spot Keno: 85.02%
Again, and also as we have seen earlier, there is a vast difference between how these games are offered. Some casinos may have the better game, at the top of this list, that holds only 6.01% for the house. Other casinos may wish to take in more money, and so offer the worst pay table, the one at the bottom of the above example, holding a huge 14.98% for the house. Other casinos may have games that are somewhere in the middle of all of this, and it is left up to you to figure out which. For the actual charts showing all numbers and combination percentages, I refer you to my book: Powerful Profits from Keno. By using the charts in my book, you will be able to learn how to identify the better paying machines and game just by looking at the machine's payback tables.
We will continue this discussion in the next column.
Victor H. Royer is the Author of 22 books on casino gaming. His newest series of 13 books -- including the new release Powerful Profits from Tournament Poker -- are now available in all major book stores, or from The Gambler's Book Shop at 1-800-522-1777, or at Amazon.Com . Visit his Web site at: http://www.GamingAuthor.com
© Copyright 2006 Victor H. Royer. All rights reserved.
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