Reason #3 why the Wizard likes Bovada:

Excellent Odds

In my opinion many online casinos are too stingy when setting the odds on their games. They think they will make more money that way but I believe they are misguided, because when players lose too quickly it’s not fun, and those players might not come back.

Bovada is one of the few casinos that understands this. They offer generous odds to let you play longer and get you a better chance of winning. Among their generous offerings are Full-Pay Jacks or Better returning 99.54%, six other video poker games paying over 99%, single-zero roulette, and my favorite, Pick ’em Poker, returning 99.95%!

Kudos to Bovada for not being afraid to give their players a good gamble.

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Keno Appendix 13 — Analysis of the Fremont "Super Eight"

Last Update: Dec 14, 2009

The "Super Eight" is a keno game I noticed at the Fremont casino in downtown Las Vegas on December 11, 2009. It works like a "way ticket," with four groups of two. However, it has bigger payoffs than if you did it based on the regular pick-2 pays. The cost of each ticket is $15.

To be specific, the player picks four sets of two numbers. Each pair of two numbers should be next to each other on the card, and circled. The player will be paid according to how many in each of the four pairs hit. For example, if one pair had two catches, two pairs had one catch, and one pair had zero catches, it would be represented as 2-1-1-0, which pays $28.

The following table shows all the possible outcomes.

Fremont "Super Eight"
Event	Pays	Probability	Return
0-0-0-0	$0	0.098434	0
1-0-0-0	$0	0.266939	0
1-1-0-0	$1	0.271464	0.271464
1-1-1-0	$4	0.122696	0.490782
1-1-1-1	$10	0.020796	0.207958
2-0-0-0	$15	0.042265	0.633981
2-1-0-0	$20	0.085964	1.719271
2-1-1-0	$28	0.058280	1.631850
2-1-1-1	$48	0.013171	0.632194
2-2-0-0	$148	0.006805	1.007206
2-2-1-0	$248	0.009228	2.288476
2-2-1-1	$415	0.003128	1.298138
2-2-2-0	$1947	0.000487	0.948226
2-2-2-1	$3605	0.000330	1.190307
2-2-2-2	$31640	0.000013	0.413526
Total		1	12.733378

The lower right cell shows a return of $12.74. For a $15 bet, that makes the return $12.74/$15 = 84.89%. As far as I know, that is the highest return for a non-progressive keno game in Las Vegas.