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• Click here for a list of places to play Keno in Northeast Ohio
State lottery officials said the game is not a substitute for slot machines or so-called "skill games" such as Tic Tac Fruit. Those machines were outlawed by Gov. Ted Strickland last year and removed from establishments all over the state.
"Keno is a typical lottery game," said Marie Kilbane, lottery spokeswoman. "People play against one another, not against the machine."
Players can wager up to $20 by selecting 1 to 10 numbers from a pool of 80 digits. But unlike traditional Ohio lottery games, players only have to wait four minutes to see if they've won. And the money Ohio brings in will help keep the state's budget afloat.
The lottery's newest offering is based on a game that was played during the Han Dynasty in China around 200 B.C., Kilbane said.
COLUMBUS -- A legislative panel signed off Monday on a contract that will put Ohio's $2.2 billion lottery in the hands of a new operator for the first time in more than 20 years.
The state Controlling Board approved a pact in which Intralot will set up a new lottery system before going online next summer.
When the system has been thoroughly tested, Lottery Director Michael Dolan will return to the Controlling Board for final approval of a pact worth about $170 million over 10 years.
The lottery is making the switch over objections from Gtech Corp., which argues that Intralot has no experience operating a large state lottery.
But Lottery Commission Director Michael Dolan has said giving the contract to Intralot will save the state $20 million.
Gtech will continue to operate the lottery until July 1, 2009, including a new game called Keno, with proceeds to help plug a projected budget deficit.
Say Dann's raid on Tic-Tac-Fruit violated order Tuesday
COLUMBUS --Game machine makers who feel betrayed by former Attorney General Marc Dann have filed a contempt motion against the state that could cost Ohio taxpayers.
Ohio Skill Games and other game makers accuse the attorney general's office under Dann of orchestrating a police task force raid on the popular coin-operated games in 2007 - just before they were outlawed - despite a pair of orders from a judge barring the action.
"The attorney general specifically authorized the task force to violate the court's order, despite the court's clear written and oral mandates to the contrary," reads a motion filed before Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Michael Holbrook, who had issued the orders.
May 28: Long-time contractor for the Ohio Lottery complains about rival's winning bid
COLUMBUS -- The Ohio Lottery has put the brakes on a $170 million contract that would turn the states numbers games over to a new gaming company for the first time in more than 20 years.
Lottery Director Michael Dolan withdrew his request Monday for approval of the pact by the state controlling board after members of the panel said he should hold a hearing on a losing bidders protest before they act. He expects to bring the request back in two weeks.
"I think it is important to let the hearing process play out," said State Sen. John Carey, a Wellston Republican and member of the controlling board.
Dolan announced three weeks ago that Intralot, a Greek gaming company with a U.S. operation based in Georgia, had been chosen to run the lottery games beginning in July 2009.
GTECH, based in Providence, R.I., but owned by an Italian firm, is challenging the contract award, arguing in part that Intralot lacks the experience and equipment to run Ohios $2.2 billion lottery. GTECH has run the states online games since the 1980s.
Ohio contract is worth $170 million
The company that runs Ohio's $2.2 billion lottery charged Tuesday that its rival - which just won the state's next lottery contract - lacks the experience and the equipment to take over such games as Mega Millions, Pick 3 and the forthcoming Keno.
GTECH Corp., which has held the contract since 1985, also complained the committee responsible for evaluating the bids failed to investigate misrepresentations by the winning bidder, Intralot USA, and made procedural mistakes that benefited Intralot.
The contract, which begins next summer, is worth more than $170 million over 10 years. Intralot's bid was more than $24 million lower than GTECH's.
Ohio's controlling board, which approves large state contracts, is expected to vote on the contract June 2.
"Ohio really went out of its way to make it a fair process, and we won and GTECH lost, and it's as simple as that," Intralot President Thomas Little said in an interview.
Republicans in the Ohio legislature Tuesday put the brakes on Gov. Ted Strickland's plan to patch the state budget by putting quick-draw Keno lottery terminals in bars and restaurants.
And some legislators plan to try to kill the expansion of the lottery altogether.
"I have long been an ardent opponent of expanding gaming in the state of Ohio and I think -- no pun intended -- that Keno is a bad bet," said State Rep. Jay Hottinger, a Newark Republican who chairs the House Finance Committee and sits on the state Controlling Board.
Hottinger said an effort to block Keno could pop up when legislators begin considering a budget correction bill in a few weeks or through separate bills.
State Sen. Ron Amstutz, a Wooster Republican, has scheduled a news conference for Wednesday to announce that he will introduce a bill to kill Keno.
Any legislation blocking Keno would ultimately end up back on the Democratic governor s desk.
"It gets messy, but to say that there's opposition within the legislature to expanding gaming and specifically the Keno route, that is not an understatement," Hottinger said.
Keno would have drawings of 20 numbers every five to 10 minutes, and players watch a large video screen to see if they won.
Strickland's plan, which he says would raise about $73 million a year, hit its first legislative bump Tuesday when Senate President Bill Harris forced the governor and Lottery Director Michael Dolan to remove an $18 million request for Keno equipment from the agenda of next week's meeting of the Controlling Board.
Keno, Ohio's newest online lottery game that you can play every four minutes, is set to debut in bars and restaurants this summer.
Ohio Lottery Commission approved rules Friday by a 5-3 vote, with some questioning if the game is too similar to casino and slot-machine gambling that voters have repeatedly rejected and Gov. Ted Strickland has renounced.
• Can be played in any place with a Class D liquor license, including bars, restaurants and Veterans of Foreign Wars halls.
• Will be in 1,100 locations statewide on July 1; 1,950 by the end of the year.
• Expected to generate $73 million a year beginning in 2009.
How to play:
• Spend $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $10 or $20 and choose 1 to 10 numbers.
• 20 of the 80 numbers on the screen will be randomly drawn every 4 minutes from 11:04 a.m. to 1:44 a.m.
• Payouts, based on the amount bet and numbers matched, range from $2 ($1 for 1 number that has a match) to $2 million ($20 for 10 numbers with all 10 matching).
• You can place the same bet for consecutive drawings.
Dolan and Strickland maintain Keno has no resemblance to Tic Tac Fruit, cash-playing video games that were outlawed last year by the governor.
Dolan said Friday that Keno, in which players can watch drawings of 20 numbers on a large monitor, is not a skill-based game because players know the payouts and play against others in the state. He said the only difference between Keno and other lottery games was its frequency.
That concerned some commissioners.
Keno is key to strengthening lotto
Columbus -- Gov. Ted Strickland campaigned as a gambling foe, but during his first year in office he has presided over an expansion of the state lottery - capped by his decision to bring fast-draw Keno to Ohio.Among the moves Strickland has made affecting the lottery, he has:
• Allowed the lottery to draw winning numbers on Sundays for the first time in its 34-year history.
• Used his line-item veto authority to strike from the state budget a $20 cap that the legislature tried to put on the price of any lottery game ticket.
• Used the same authority to strike a requirement that Sunday gambling be permitted only by executive order.
• Appointed a casino gambling advocate to the Lottery Commission.
• Allowed the Lottery Commission to create Ten-OH, a daily Keno game that served as a forerunner to the quick-draw Keno that the governor intends to put in bars and restaurants throughout Ohio.
The governor and his lottery chief, former Cleveland City Councilman Mike Dolan, have followed many of the suggestions made in a memo from a state budget analyst a year ago and dusted off last month when Strickland called on state agencies to help solve a potential $1.9 billion budget shortfall.
The memo, obtained Friday by The Plain Dealer under the state's open-records law, outlined options including the Sunday drawings and the Keno games as well as the sale of pull-tab games similar to instant lottery tickets.
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