Keno Payouts Depend on the Paytable, Not Just the Jackpot

Keno has no universal payout chart. Your prize depends on how many numbers you select, how many match the draw, your stake and the operator’s paytable. On a $1 two-spot ticket, Maryland’s $10 prize produces a calculated 39.87% house edge; Ohio’s $11 prize lowers it to 33.86%. The matching probability is the same, but the price of playing is not.

Choose a lottery to compare its $1 two-spot payout and expected cost, without multipliers.

Read the Paytable for Your Exact Game

A spot is a number you select; a catch is a selected number that matches the draw. In Maryland’s classic Keno, you select up to 10 numbers from 1–80, and the game draws 20 numbers. Prizes depend on the number of matches, including zero matches on certain tickets. Maryland Lottery game description

The chart below shows Maryland’s published base-game prizes for a $1 wager per drawing. It is a specific lottery example, not a universal casino paytable. These are gross prize amounts, not net profits, and they exclude Bonus and Super Bonus.

Numbers Selected	Exact Matches → Prize
1 spot	1 → $2
2 spots	2 → $10
3 spots	2 → $2; 3 → $25
4 spots	2 → $1; 3 → $5; 4 → $50
5 spots	3 → $2; 4 → $15; 5 → $300
6 spots	3 → $1; 4 → $5; 5 → $50; 6 → $1,000
7 spots	3 → $1; 4 → $3; 5 → $15; 6 → $100; 7 → $2,500
8 spots	4 → $2; 5 → $10; 6 → $50; 7 → $500; 8 → $10,000
9 spots	0 → $2; 5 → $5; 6 → $20; 7 → $100; 8 → $2,500; 9 → $25,000
10 spots	0 → $4; 5 → $2; 6 → $10; 7 → $50; 8 → $400; 9 → $4,000; 10 → $100,000

Match counts not listed pay nothing. Source: Maryland Lottery prize structure.

A $10 prize on a $1 ticket means $9 net profit, not $10 profit plus your stake back. A $1 prize merely returns the $1 spent.

Maryland generally scales its listed prizes with the amount wagered, but its base-game maximum is $100,000 per game on any one ticket. Do not scale a jackpot beyond that stated cap. The prize structure linked above supplies the amounts and limits.

A Two-Spot Ticket Makes the House Edge Checkable

Assume one $1 Maryland base-game wager, a fair draw of 20 distinct numbers from 80, no multiplier and a $10 prize for matching both selections. No other match count pays on this ticket.

The probability that both selected numbers appear is P(both match) = (20 ÷ 80) × (19 ÷ 79) = 19 ÷ 316 ≈ 6.0127%.

The second factor is 19/79, not 20/80: within a draw, numbers are selected without replacement. That gives roughly 1 chance in 16.63 of receiving the prize, matching Maryland’s published odds.

Expected gross return is $10 × (19 ÷ 316) ≈ $0.6013 per $1 wagered.

Expected net result is $0.6013 − $1 ≈ −$0.3987.

So this ticket has approximately 60.13% return to player (RTP) and a 39.87% house edge. These are calculations from Maryland’s published paytable, before taxes. RTP measures the average amount returned relative to the stake; the house edge measures the portion lost on average.

Ohio’s published rules use the same 20-from-80 draw but pay $11 for matching both numbers on a $1 two-spot wager. The same calculation gives $11 × 19/316 ≈ $0.6614 returned, or a 33.86% house edge. One extra dollar in the winning prize lowers the edge by about 6.01 percentage points; it does not make the wager positive-value. Ohio Lottery Keno rules

That comparison applies to these two base-game tickets. It does not establish the return of either lottery’s other spot counts, multipliers or other operators’ games.

Calculate Return From Every Paying Match Count

For any fair 20-from-80 game, the probability of exactly k catches when selecting n numbers is P(k catches) = C(20, k) × C(60, n − k) ÷ C(80, n).

Here, C(a, b) counts ways to choose b items from a. Multiply each catch probability by its gross prize and add the results to get expected gross return. Subtract the full stake to get expected net profit or loss. That is the method explained in expected value basics.

For tickets with several paying match counts, calculating only the top prize misses part of the return. Maryland’s nine- and ten-spot tickets also pay for zero catches, so those outcomes belong in the calculation too.

A Paying Ticket Is Not Necessarily a Profitable Ticket

“Odds of winning” can include break-even prizes. Maryland lists about 1 in 3.86 for its four-spot game, but a two-number match pays only the $1 stake back. That is not the probability of making a profit; the prize structure distinguishes the paying outcomes.

Multipliers change the cost as well as the prize. Maryland’s Bonus doubles the total wager; Super Bonus triples it. Evaluate the probability-weighted payout against that full cost, not against the base stake alone. The two-spot calculations above do not establish the return of either add-on. Maryland Bonus pricing

Expected return is not a typical ticket result. The Maryland two-spot example pays nothing about 93.99% of the time and $10 otherwise. Its roughly 60-cent expected return is an average, not an amount each ticket pays.

Across 100 separate $1 Maryland two-spot wagers, the expected loss is about $39.87, but the actual result can differ substantially. Assuming independent draws, earlier misses do not make the next ticket more likely to hit. Set an affordable spending limit before play: calculating the edge measures the price of the gamble, not a way to recover losses.