ZeST Keno
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Copyright 1992, David Becker
GEnie D.Becker8
Compuserve 73030,3562
I've always been intrigued by games with numbers. We have lotto, bingo,
roulette and blackjack here in Vancouver, Canada but it wasn't until
our last trip to Reno, Nevada that I noticed a game called Keno. We were
having breakfast at the hotel when we decided to pick four numbers and try
our luck. Well we hit four out of four and won about $250.00 on our $2.00
bet! I was still thinking about Keno when we got home the next week and I
decided to write a quick program that would play hundreds of Keno games
really fast and let me test different combinations of numbers.
So what's the bottom line? You won't get rich in Las Vegas but you might have
some fun with this new freeware program! This version of Keno uses my ZeST
alternative interface and requires a monochrome monitor. It was created with
the help of AutoZeST available on all the major online services. ZeST Keno is
not a betting game as much as it is a tool for analyzing the game of Keno and
the outcomes using different combinations of numbers. Most casinos in Vegas
and Reno give away Keno rule brochures showing the amounts that can be bet and
the number of hits that payoff. I use one of these rule sheets from Harrah's
in Reno to experiment with. One important rule that must be remembered when
playing Keno at a casino is that you MUST cash in your winning ticket before
the beginning of the next game. This gives you only about twenty minutes and
therefore makes multiple card play very difficult. Even though the payoff,
number of hits needed and amount bet will vary from casino to casino, the
basic game play seems to stay the same. Twenty numbers are chosen at random
from a possible eighty numbers. You can choose between one and twenty numbers
and your payoff will increase the more correct numbers you hit and the more
you bet.
ZeST Keno is divided into the game board on the upper left, the keypad on
the right and the numbers you choose along the bottom. Pick your numbers by
pointing at the game board and clicking the left mouse button. The chosen
numbers appear within the long button at the very bottom of your screen. If
you wish to choose new numbers, click within this button to reset it.
To determine the number of consecutive games ZeST Keno will play, use the
keypad just like a handheld calculator. CLEAR resets the number of games.
You can play up to 9999 consecutive games (which would roughly equal 140
days of game play in a 24 hour casino playing every 20 minutes!).
Press the button marked BEGIN PLAYING and off you go. ZeST Keno flies through
each game throwing the winning numbers on the screen so fast you can't keep
track! A running count of games played appears within the consecutive game
indicator box. You can cancel the game play by holding down any one of the
mouse buttons. After you've let ZeST Keno play a few hundred games press the
button marked DATA and you will be presented with a listing showing each game
number and the amount of correct hits. At the bottom of this display are some
buttons. The first two on the left move you backwards and forwards through the
listing. The third and fourth buttons toggle you between the text listing and
the bar graph display. The next button shows you the total number of hits and
the last button exits back to the main screen. I have not built in any print
routines, I instead like to make a screendump (ALT-HELP) when I see some
interesting data.
I hope you have fun with ZeST Keno. It is freeware and you use it at your
own risk. Check out all my other programs online!