Las Vegas: Keno
By contrast with the superficially similar game of bingo, keno is renowned in Las Vegas for offering abysmal odds. The crucial difference is that bingo is played out until someone has circled all the numbers on their score sheet, so there's always a winner. With keno, on the other hand, each player chooses up to twenty numbers between 1 and 80, and their choice is then compared with the twenty drawn by the casino. Even if you select twenty numbers, the probability of five being correct is less than one in 300; of picking eight, is one in 250,000; and of picking ten is one in ten million. Compare those odds with the returns actually paid by the casinos - Bellagio for example pays 2 to 1 on picking five, and 10 to 1 on picking ten, or a millionth of the correct odds - and you'll see why they're on to such a good deal.
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