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On my recent visit to Treasure Island, I noticed that they are no longer writing keno. Since this odd game has been such a fixture during the 25 years I’ve been visiting Las Vegas, I wondered if dropping the game is a growing trend among Las Vegas casinos.
Yes, especially on the Strip, where there are only five live keno games left.
Keno is often labeled the worst gambling game in the casino. But if it’s such a potent “house game,” why is it dying in Las Vegas? Once a staple on every casino floor in the city, keno lounges have closed steadily over the years.
In the Las Vegas Advisor, we’ve followed the long slow demise of live keno, but we’ve been especially lucky to publish two studies done by Dr. Robert Stauffer and a few of his students at Trinity International in Las Vegas, an independent private co-ed high school.
The first was conducted in 1993, the second in 2017, so he had data from nearly 25 years ago to compare against last year. What did he find? In 1993, 46 casinos in the Las Vegas area offered live keno games; a year ago, there were only 27.
Dr. Stauffer also studied keno’s well-known bad odds and found that they’d gotten worse. In 1993, the range of the house edge for the games studied ran from a low of 21.37% to a high of 33.14%. In last year’s study, the range was 25.10% to 36.78%, indicating that casinos that continue to deal keno are charging gamblers more for the privilege of playing it.
Here are the 27 casinos that Dr. Stauffer found with live keno in 2017. To our knowledge, nothing’s changed since then. And you’ll see that the vast majority of them (22 out of the 27) are either downtown or in the locals casinos: Arizona Charlie’s Decatur, Bally’s, Boulder Station, California, El Cortez, Eldorado, Excalibur, Fiesta Henderson, Fiesta Rancho, Flamingo, Four Queens, Fremont, Gold Coast, Golden Nugget, Green Valley Ranch, Harrah’s, Jerry’s Nugget, Jokers Wild, Orleans, Palace Station, Red Rock, Rio, Santa Fe, Sunset Station, Texas Station, the D, Treasure Island
Though the edge at live keno is horrendous and getting worse, the upside is the opportunity to make small wagers (often $1) on a slow-paced game. In fact, in her book The Frugal Gambler Casino Guide, Jean Scott ranks live keno as the third-best gambling option in terms of playing with the lowest hourly expected loss (behind sports betting and blackjack). Play for minimum bets and get a comped drink while you're at it and you probably have the best of it. Note that this doesn’t apply to video keno, where speed takes over and the deal evaporates.