The owner shouted across the bar, to one of his regulars sitting in front of a television screen showing lots
of numbers.
“This guy wants to know if you play keno,” said Mike Pacheco, the owner of Uncle Eddie’s in Salisbury, Mass.
Joseph Whirley, his baseball cap backward, his white T-shirt with orange Hooters letters, his cup of beer nearly empty, laughed. What else could he do? It was like asking Tom Brady if he liked to throw a football.
Yes, Whirley said, he plays keno.
A lot.
“I’m one of the ambassadors here,” said Whirley, who’s 43 and lives in West Newbury, Mass. “Not only can you get your favorite cocktail, but you can sit here, watch sports and play keno.”
Maybe you’ll be a local version of Whirley. A lover of keno and sports. If so, your nights out will soon feature a different sort of rhythm.
You’ll have more on your plate, beyond food. You’ll have more to focus on, beyond friendly conversation and a beer or a drink. You’ll have a rectangular piece of paper in front of you and a TV screen showing something other than Red Sox games or Donald Trump.
Sometime soon, you’ll have keno.
It’s a numbers game, a game of chance, and the money you spend on it will fund kindergarten for the towns and cities that approve it. Gov. Chris Sununu is expected to sign keno into law in the next few weeks.
Our southern neighbors wonder why we took so long to see the light. They’ve been playing for nearly 25 years.
“We’re going to go to a place in Massachusetts even if it doesn’t have better drinks than someplace else,” 54-year-old Mike Milnes of Haverhill (theirs, not ours) told me this week while sipping a vodka gimlet at Uncle Eddie’s. “If my wife wants me to go out with her, she will pick the place that has keno, then I’ll go out with her and I can still pay attention to her.”
It’s ingrained in the cultural landscape down there. In Massachusetts, you don’t pronounce your R’s, you cheer for the Red Sox, and you play keno.
That’s what I found at a few restaurants and bars this week in Haverhill and along the beach in Salisbury (theirs, not ours). I found people playing afternoon, weekday keno.
At Uncle Eddie’s, while families and teens strolled past the open door on a hot, sunny day, I asked for input on keno. In just a few seconds, I heard dialogue from Pacheco, Milnes and bartender Jen Preston that captured various elements of the issue.
“You’re still going to have hardcore liberals who are going to care more about, ‘Oh, my husband will turn into a gambler with a problem,” Pacheco said.
“But they might not say that if you show them where the money is going to go,” Milnes said.
“This isn’t like scratch tickets, though,” Preston added. “You have a higher probability of getting your money back because you don’t have to bet a lot. You can still win a whole bunch of money off a one-dollar bet. Spend five bucks a day if you really wanted to.”
She’s right. One buck and five correct numbers among the 20 that flash on the TV screen wins you $450. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but I met several people who have won a lot of money.
One was Donna Coyner, whom I met at The Carousel, a bar two doors down from Uncle Eddie’s. She lives across the border, in Seabrook.
A few years ago, she finished her shift as a cook and, with $2 in her pocket, tipped the bartender a buck for her free after-work drink. She played keno with the other dollar, something she called a six-number quick pick.
She won $1,600. “I didn’t believe it at first,” Coyner told me.
This is not to say that keno is a ticket to wealth, and most players pay in more than they ever get out. As Milnes, laughing, told me, “Oh God, I’m behind, absolutely behind. But it’s fun to do. When you hit something, bang, you feel good.”
The game is a rapid-fire form of Bingo, a nonstop image of numbers popping up on a screen, with each game separated by just three minutes. Once upon a time, a five-minute break separated games, but, I was told, players grew impatient. They wanted more keno, more often.
Keno, keno, keno.
You can pick one number or as many as 12. You can bet $1 or as much as $20. You can win $2.50, or, by nailing all 12 of your numbers among the 20 chosen, a million bucks.
There will be limitations, though, once Sununu signs New Hampshire’s bill into law, which he’s expected to do sometime this summer. While you can play keno in Massachusetts at convenience stores as well as bars and restaurants, here it will be legal only at places with a valid liquor license.
And it might not sprout up everywhere. Each town or city must vote to accept it, and a public hearing must be scheduled at least 30 days before the vote.
In other words, towns can keep it out if they want to. Officials here are worried the game will foster an addiction, and I was told that’s not entirely out of the question.
“It’s fun, but it costs you a lot of money,” said a senior named Paul, who declined to give his last name while playing at the bar at Mr. Mike’s in Haverhill, Mass. “You eventually end up a big loser. You have your good moments when you might be hot, and you have your moments when you’re going to lose a lot of money. It could be addictive.”
Perhaps. Pacheco, though, said he knows his customers. He said they have their urgings under control.
“This is a bar of regulars, so we know the people and we know it’s not breaking their bank,” Pacheco said. “If there was a gambling problem, I don’t see it. No wife has ever come in screaming at her husband about we don’t have the money for the mortgage.”
To which Whirley said without skipping a beat, “I’m sure it’s happened.”
Coyner took another approach, reasoning that potential addictions lurk around every corner.
“Scratch tickets are an addiction,” she said. “Cookies are an addiction. Cake is an addiction. Alcohol is an addiction. It’s the same as gambling, whether you’re playing Megabucks or Powerball. It’s all the same, so you might as well have keno.”
Pacheco said it’s “asinine” to have poker at Seabrook Park while banning keno.
It brings millions into the Massachusetts economy. Here, about 90 percent of keno revenue will support full-day kindergarten.
Pacheco’s place has a 200-person capacity and is often full on summer nights. He estimated that 50 of those customers play keno. During those times, there are bartenders for drinks, and a kenotender for keno.
And keno alone.
“They’ll be lining up waving their tickets, trying to get them in on time,” Pacheco said. “This place is packed.”