Online Slot Guide - Gambling History

Gambling History - History Of Keno

Keno is an interesting mixture of bingo and lottery, and it evolved as a game from Chinese Lottery. Chinese Lottery was introduced in China by Cheung Leung as a way of raising money for the state. It was based on the children's nursery rhyme 'The Thousand Character Classic' which was used in schools to teach children their characters. In 200BC the general Cheung Leung invented a system of betting based on the first 120 characters of the nursery rhyme.

To play the lottery people had to pick some characters out of the 120 that would be drawn at random. They would mark the characters with a brush and ink. If they chose the numbers that came up in the draw they would win prizes. In this way Cheung Leung was able to raise funds for his dynasty; the game was dubbed 'the idiots' taxes'. Two draws were made each day and the results were carried by white carrier pigeon across the country. This detail also meant that the game was often known as the White Pigeon Tickets game or 'pak kop piu' in Cantonese. It was so popular that the money raised from is said to have been enough to pay for the construction of the great wall. The Thousand Character Classic is still played in China and uses very much the same format. The term keno 'spot' which is used in our modern day keno to refer to each number picked in a keno race originates in the traditional Chinese lottery. Because bets were placed using a brush and ink by marking the chosen ticket; this was known as a spot. The ink ensured that bets could not be changed at the last minute. Interestingly, there are still some casinos in Las Vegas which mark spots on cards in the traditional manner in keno races.

Chinese immigrants brought the Chinese Lottery to America in the nineteenth century. It soon became popular in Nevada and California where it was soon given a new name: 'Horse Race Keno'. The reason for the new name was that lotteries were at the time illegal, but horse races were still allowed, so in order to evade the law gambling houses would pretend that the bet was on a horse race. This is why a round of keno is still now known as a 'race'. Horse race keno used numbers written on pieces of paper (in the same way as the paper tickets in China) which would then be rolled up and inserted into cardboard tubes. It used 80 numbers of which 20 would then be picked at random. The paper tickets were replaced first by wooden balls and then by plastic balls with numbers printed on them.

The term Keno comes from a combination of Latin and French and means five winning numbers. When horse racing started being taxed in the 1960s, casinos were quick to change the name they used to refer to the Chinese lottery in order to avoid the taxes. So since then it has simply been called Keno. With the advent of internet gambling keno has experienced a great rise in popularity. Internet casinos have the advantage that keno races take place much faster, and several races can be programmed in advance using the same combination of spots or choosing a lucky dip.

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