North Carolinians who enjoy playing Carolina Keno, or who would like to try the thrilling new game, can now play more easily as ticket sales expand to more than 7,000 locations statewide on Sunday.

The excitement of Carolina Keno begins with drawings held every four minutes. That’s 311 drawings a day with a chance to win up to $100,000. Ticket prices start at $1.

“One of the more frequent questions we get about Carolina Keno is where can I play, so this expansion makes it easy for anyone to buy a ticket,” said Mark Michalko, executive director of the N.C. Education Lottery. “Now players can quickly grab a ticket on the go and easily check online or on their smartphone to see if they have won a prize.”

Michalko said expanding Carolina Keno will help the lottery raise additional money for education by attracting new players across the state to lottery games.

Keno drawings and their results also now will be shown on the lottery’s website, nclottery.com, and soon via smartphones using the N.C. Education Lottery Official Mobile app. This allows players on the go to see the drawing for their tickets and find out if they have won a prize.

Keno players can continue to enjoy the game at social establishments where they can get tickets in drawings and watch the results on nearby monitors as they have fun with friends.

The expansion brings Keno ticket sales to all lottery retail locations across North Carolina. For example, in Wake County alone, more than 3,000 locations will now sell Keno tickets, up from about 70 locations before.

Carolina Keno is a unique game. Players control how much they can win because they decide the prize they want to play for. They pick the prize by choosing how many numbers, called spots, they want to try and match. For each drawing, 20 out of 80 possible numbers are randomly selected as winning numbers.

For Carolina Keno, the approximate overall odds of winning a prize range from 1 in 3.86 to 1 in 16.63. The approximate odds of winning $100,000 on a 10 Spot Game are 1 in 8.91 million.

Ticket sales from games like Keno make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $700 million a year for education. For details on how lottery funds have made a difference in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties, click on the “Impact” section of the lottery’s website.