Dear Mark: Though I'm not a keno player, my favorite casino offers a Special Bonus Keno ticket. All I have to do is hit 19 out of 20, and I win $250,000. Is this ticket worth a try? Marti S.

The nerve of your favorite casino calling it a "Special Bonus" ticket. Let me illustrate how appalling this ticket is. Let's say you were to play one keno ticket per second, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. According to laws of probability you will catch 19 out of 20 once every 93,420,116 years. What are the odds of hitting it? Two quadrillion, 946 trillion, 096 billion, 780 million to one. Unfortunately, Marti, this isn't the only ruthless ticket in keno. The chances of hitting 10 of 10-and mind you they will only pay you $50,000-is nine times harder than hitting your state lottery. Then the casino has the audacity to pay you what is called an "aggregate payoff," meaning if both you and someone else are playing the same numbers and it hits solid, you split the money. Or how about this popular ticket here in Nevada-the 15 spot. Chances of your hitting it? 428 billion to one. Tall odds, but consider that no person has ever hit a solid 15 spot, a solid 14 spot, a solid 13 and to the best of my knowledge, a 12 out of 12. As you can see, Marti, these long-shot tickets-or keno in general for that matter-are a game designed for the Tootsie-Pop crowd; known by the casinos as "a sucker's born every minute" club.

Dear Mark, Over the years I have been an avid keno player. Now after reading your comments many times about keno, I have refrained from playing and limit my play to the many other games and bets you recommend. Coincidentally, I seem to be winning more. Though I have never hit a keno ticket solid, my favorite tickets in the past were a 5-spot, 7-spot, 8-spot and a 9-spot. What were the odds of me hitting one of those tickets? Alice C.

In past articles, Alice, I have listed the astronomical odds of some keno tickets that need calculators using exponential notations to figure. Below I'll list the probability of hitting the smaller tickets solid.

1/1 One in 4

2/2 One in 16

3/3 One in 72

4/4 One in 326

5/5 One in 1,550

6/6 One in 7,752

7/7 One in 40,979

8/8 One in 230,114

9/9 One in 1,380,687

10/10 One in 8,911,711

And what will the average casino pay you for hitting a solid 10? A $2 wager returns a measly $45,000 in Atlantic City and $100,000 in Nevada. Chump change considering your chances are almost nine million to one. Doesn't the lottery start to sound good about now?

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Dear Mark, Your columns illustrate a biased position when it comes to playing keno. I enjoy gambling while eating and keno is the only game that affords this. I've always liked the fact that for a dollar you could win $25,000. Why are you so anti keno? Doris F.

Because I'm resentful, invidious and jealous. I was one of those kids who never got a box of 64 Crayolas. Always a used eight pack; one broke, one missing. So any game that you mark with a crayon that carries a house percentage higher than the interest you pay on your Visa card, I'm illiberal about.

Dear Mark, I very much enjoy the historical questions you answer. Where do you find the answers to the most obscure questions? Also, how about trying mine? Tell me about the history of keno in this country. Sylvia R.

Around 200 B.C. in China, Cheung Leung introduced the lottery, the forerunner to modern day keno, to fund his army. Because of its overwhelming success, it continued, and additional proceeds from future lotteries were used to fund major projects such as the Great Wall. In the 1860s when the building of the railroads in the United States offered promise to Chinese immigrants, they brought a game, the Chinese lottery, to America. As the game's popularity grew, it evolved from a 120-grid ticket used in the railroad camps to an 80-number ticket called Keno. You wanted to know my sources, Sylvia. This sweetmeat of enlightenment came from the placemats at the coffee shop at Karl's Silver Nugget in Sparks, Nevada. Found above the placemats were cheap, terrific breakfast specials-and for some readers, that's more valuable information than the Keno answer.

Dear Mark, In past columns you have stated "unequivocally" to avoid long-shot keno tickets. How about the simple three-spot ticket? Kay B.

There is only one bigger waste of money than playing any keno ticket, Kay. That's playing two!

Dear Mark, I really enjoy keno. Would you recommend video keno or a live-action game? Rosa M.

The correct answer, Rosa, would be to suggest politely neither. The medium house advantage on all live keno games is approximately 28%. On a video keno game it is 7.5%. Why lower? Video keno has better paytables. Take the 8-spot ticket: By hitting four of eight on a video keno machine, you double your money. You'll never find that on a live keno game. On paper, it looks like video poker is the better deal. Not so fast my friend. At $1 a pop, the most you could lose on a live game is about $15, as that is the average number of games called per hour. A typical video keno player can burn through $15 in quarters in under five minutes. I recommend, Rosa, for those with a keno fixation, video poker instead.