KENO, OR LOTTO.
This game is played with a large number of cards, on which are printed various permutations of the numbers 1 to 90, taken five at a time; but each of the five numbers selected for one combination must be in a separate division of tens, such combinations as 2 4 8 16 18 not being allowed on any card, because the 2 4 and 8, for instance, are all in the first ten numbers of the 90. These cards have each a number, printed in large red type across the face of the other figures. The following might be a keno card, No. 325:—
Some cards have more than three rows of figures on them, but none have more than five in one row.
The cards are left on the tables in large numbers, and any number of persons may play. Each selects as many cards as he wishes, or thinks he can watch, and places upon them their price, usually twenty-five cents each. An assistant comes round and calls out the numbers of all the cards to be played, and they are “pegged” on a large board provided for the purpose.
Ninety small ivory balls, with flattened surfaces to carry the numbers, are placed in a keno goose, which looks like a coffee urn with the spout at the bottom. This spout can be screwed out to put in the balls, and is controlled with a spring cut-off like a powder horn, which lets out only one ball at a time. When all the cards have been pegged, the goose is rapidly revolved several times back and forth, and then a number is taken out, and placed in a little tray with ninety depressions in it, numbered in regular order, which hold the balls as they come from the goose. The keno roller calls each number distinctly, and the players who find it on their cards cover it with a button. The first player to get a horizontal row of five numbers covered in this manner, calls out “Keno!” or bangs the table with a card, and that stops the game. An assistant comes round to the table and calls out the number of the card; if it has been paid for and pegged, he proceeds to call the numbers forming the keno, and these are checked by the roller from the balls on the tray. If everything is correct, the player is given all the money paid by the other players for their cards, less the ten per cent which goes to the house. If two kenos are made on the same number, they divide the pool equally.
As an illustration of the profitable nature of the game for the house, it may be remarked that if ten men were to play keno for a dollar a card, and each of them made keno ten times, they would all be “dead broke;” because on each of the hundred kenos at ten dollars each, the bank would have taken out its dollar percentage.