The History of Keno

The game of Keno dates back about 2000 years. In fact, ancient Chinese scrolls show that it was Cheung Leung of the Han Dynasty who established a game very similar to Keno as early as about 200 BC.

But why did Cheung invent the game? Well, according to most historians it was out of pure necessity. In 200 BC, Cheung had been at war for several years – a fact that had taken a huge tool on both his city and army. Supplies were running short and the citizens of his precious city refused to donate any more money to the war efforts. Suddenly, Cheung got a brilliant idea. He created a game of chance in order to produce income for his army. The game was an instant hit and came to save the city. It is also said that the revenues from the game also helped funding the Great Wall.

In the beginning, the game was played with 120 different Chinese characters and the goal was to select the winning ones. In order to send out the winning characters from the Keno games in the larger cities to rural communities, carrier pigeons were used. Soon, the game was known as “the White Pigeon Game”.

In the 1800s, the game fund its way to North America. Not with the pigeons, but with the Chinese immigrants who helped building the railroad in the West. In spite of the fact that the game actually was illegal there, it flourished among the Chinese immigrants, particularly in the bigger cities such as San Francisco. As a matter of fact, it was played so much that it soon became nick-named “the Chinese Lottery”.

However, the game was not an instant hit in the English speaking communities. The Chinese characters used in the game were simply way too difficult to tell apart for those not speaking the language. Around the beginning of the 20th century, Keno operators finally decided to substitute the Chinese characters with Arabic numbers in order to attract more players to the game. About the same time, the number of numbers was reduced from 120 to 80 and soon the game had grown enormously popular.

But more changes had to be made to the game when Nevada legalized gambling in 1931. Even though a lot of games now had become legal, it did not include the game of Keno since the new regulations did not include lotteries, such as Keno. To get around this, Keno operators changed the name of the game to “Race Horse Keno”. Each number was now considered to be a horse and the winning horses were in fact the winning numbers. Later when the American Government passed a law taxing off-track betting, the name of the game was once again changed – this time to just Keno.

Today, Keno is a game where one single bet can make players economically independent for the rest of their lives. And maybe the best place to find a really great Keno game nowadays is online.