Keno Odds for Every Spot From 1 to 10

A keno goose, the wooden ball-drawing device of early keno games; Index of American Design watercolour by Sebastian Simonet, c. 1936. Photo: Sebastian Simonet, CC0

The draw that every figure comes from

The NSW Keno Rules, effective 23 February 2026, define a spot as a number chosen from 1 to 80, and each game draws 20 winning numbers. The rules allow entries of 1 to 10 spots, plus 15, 20 and 40. The Victorian rules on the same site carry the same schedule of prizes for the $1 game, so the figures below apply in both states.

Our earlier piece on practical keno tips covers how to play and manage a session. This one is pure arithmetic: what the odds are, and what the prize table pays against them.

The counting rule behind keno odds

Keno is a hypergeometric problem. If you pick n spots and want exactly k of them among the 20 drawn, the number of ways it can happen is:

ways = C(n, k) x C(80 - n, 20 - k)

Divide by the total number of possible draws, C(80, 20), and you have the probability. C(a, b) is the count of ways to choose b items from a. The total is a big number: C(80, 20) = 3,535,316,142,212,174,320.

Worked example: the 10-spot jackpot

1. Choose the 10 spots. To catch all 10, all of your numbers must be among the 20 drawn. There is C(10, 10) = 1 way to do that with your numbers.
2. Fill the other 10 drawn numbers. They must come from the 70 numbers you did not pick: C(70, 10) = 396,704,524,216 ways.
3. Divide by every possible draw. 396,704,524,216 / 3,535,316,142,212,174,320 = 0.0000001122.
4. Turn it into "1 in X". 1 / 0.0000001122 = 8,911,711. So a 10-spot catches all 10 about once in 8,911,711 games.

The same method gives the full 10-spot picture, with the prize per $1 from the Regular Keno schedule in rule 18(b).

Chance of each catch on a 10-spot and the prize the schedule pays for it.

Notice that the most common prize, a catch of 4, only returns your dollar. Of the roughly 21% of games that pay anything, about 70% are that $1 refund.

Odds and returns for spots 1 to 10

Repeating the calculation for every spot size, using the $1 schedule. The return column is the long-run amount paid back per $1 from the fixed prizes alone.

Top-catch odds, any-prize odds and fixed-prize return by spot size.

The returns for spots 1 to 6 cluster around 75c. That matches the rules: for Regular Keno, the amount paid into the Keno Prize Fund is "75% of Subscriptions". For spots 7 to 10, part of the money goes to jackpot growth and the jackpot fill, so the fixed prizes alone return less (our sum for the 10-spot's fixed prizes, counting only the $250,000 base for 10 out of 10, is about 55.6c) and the rest of the value sits in a prize you have roughly a one in nine million chance of hitting.

One more pattern stands out. Spots 2, 5 and 8 have worse any-prize odds than the sizes either side of them, because the schedule starts paying at a higher catch. A 5-spot needs 3 numbers to win anything, while a 4-spot pays from 2; an 8-spot needs 4, while a 7-spot pays from 3.

Heads or Tails: three outcomes, two prices

Heads or Tails ignores your numbers and looks at where the 20 drawn numbers fall. Under the rules, the result is Heads when 11 or more are in 1 to 40, Tails when 11 or more are in 41 to 80, and Evens when the split is exactly 10 and 10. The schedule in rule 18(d) pays $2 for a winning $1 on Heads or Tails and $4 on Evens.

• Evens: C(40, 10) x C(40, 10) / C(80, 20) = 20.32%, about 1 in 4.92.
• Heads: (100% - 20.32%) / 2 = 39.84%, about 1 in 2.51. Tails is the same.
• Return on Heads or Tails: $2 x 0.3984 = 79.7c per $1.
• Return on Evens: $4 x 0.2032 = 81.3c per $1.

Both sit close to the 80% Keno Prize Fund contribution that the rules set for Heads or Tails. The side game hands back more per dollar than the regular spots, but over many games it still costs roughly 19c to 20c in every dollar.

What "1 in X" does and does not mean

A chance of 1 in 8,911,711 does not mean a 10-spot is due after that many games. Each draw is independent, so the odds are identical on the first game and the millionth. It also does not mean you will hit it within that many tries: the chance of at least one full 10-spot catch in 8,911,711 games is 1 - (1 - 1/8,911,711)^8,911,711, which is about 63%. Over 1,000 games, the chance is about 0.011%.

The same logic applies to hot and cold numbers. The rules describe a draw of 20 numbers from 80 every game; past results do not enter the count. For how electronic draws are tested, see our explainer on random number generators, and for a comparison with table games, the piece on which games pay back the most.

Speed is the hidden cost

Victoria's regulator, the VGCCC, notes that keno "moves quickly, giving you little time to decide whether to play again before the next draw". A 25c loss per dollar is modest on one game and large across an evening of back-to-back draws. If keno has become hard to stop, the free Gambling Helpline on 1800 858 858 is open 24 hours a day, and our safer gambling page lists the services in each state.