Keno player has no idea they've won $1.8 million

The winning entry was purchased in draw 634 last night at the Twin Towns Juniors club in Tweed Heads South but the winning player is yet to check their winning ticket and start the prize claim process.

Keno wins of this magnitude are pretty rare.

Unlike lotteries, the game is structured in a way that allows players to choose how many numbers they play – which means many people opt for games with more favourable odds but much smaller payouts.

To win a lottery-sized jackpot in a 10-spot Keno game, you’ve got to throw caution to the wind and have all 10 of your numbers pop up in the same draw (20 numbers between 1 and 80 are drawn each game).

That’s what the mystery Tweed Heads player did to great effect.

When the lucky punter finally finds their ticket (if it hasn’t already gone through the wash), they probably won’t mind that their precise payout of $1,779,864.20 is statistically a poor reward for the true odds of 8,911,712 to one.

Read Related Also: Longtime Texas Christian school teacher fired after attending drag show

Nor perhaps will they be aware that Australians lost more than $300 million overall on Keno in 2019-20, the most recent 12-month period for which complete data is available.

Keno is still a relatively small fish in the Australian gambling sea.

Keno says that in the 2022-23 financial year, players across the eastern states of mainland Australia “celebrated” wins of more than $1.34 billion in total.

Based on government data, the total amount bet would have been close to $2 billion.

All services are free, confidential and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.