Tony D’s is a sports bar in Fairfield. Rows of TVs line the walls. Most are tuned to sports, but one of them shows an ongoing keno game. Keno is a lottery-like game where participants pick numbers off a screen.
The first keno games debuted in Connecticut on Monday. They’re now available at hundreds of locations in the state.
About half of the dozen or so patrons at Tony D’s are watching the numbers. It’s a few dollars to buy in. Every four minutes, they find out if they’ve won.
Martin Burke is playing but “Not well. Down about 250.” But Burke says you don’t play Keno to make a profit. “That’s not how this works. You gotta play for fun, man, you can’t expect to win it back, but you hope to hit big all the time.” He adds, “I’ve been amped up for this day for like, a month.”
The Connecticut General Assembly considered keno for several years before it finally passed in the 2015 legislative session. In the debate in the legislature, the argument was that the state had to be competitive with neighboring states like New York and Massachusetts. The Connecticut Lottery Corporation, which runs keno in the state, told lawmakers it could bring up to $30 million a year in revenue to the state, but critics say keno could lead to more gambling addiction.
Tamara Petro of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling, says, “People may not realize with keno, because the bets are so small, how much they might actually be gambling.”
Petro says that kind of all-day gambling is usually limited to casinos.
“With keno, the gambling is now taken further into the community. You might find it in a bar, restaurant, you may find it in a bowling alley, VFW club.”
Petro says the council is looking at neighboring states to see what kind of effects keno might have in Connecticut. Tony Di Libro, the owner of Tony D’s, looked there too when a salesman approached him about putting keno in his bar.
“It’s worked 30 years in Massachusetts, and it’s still going strong according to the salesman and the people in Hartford, so I’m sure it’ll go good for the state.”
But the state will have to wait a lot longer than four minutes to find out for sure.
