Keno Through Time: The History of the Game
Keno is a game that started way back in ancient China and its history is one that spans the generations only to emerge as one of the most popular casino games today.
Accounts of how keno was created point to Cheung Leung, an ancient Chinese ruler, as its creator. According to stories Cheung Leung was leading his city through a long drawn out war, and funds were low. The people, already tired and disillusioned by the war, were not willing to shell out more of their hard-earned money for the war-time effort, and therefore Cheung Leung faced the daunting task of finding another way to raise funds without increasing people's taxes.
Being the wise and ingenious ruler that he is, he managed to create a game that would attract the people into playing it, and the funds gathered from the proceeds of the game will be used to continue the war.
The game that he devised was based on the ancient Chines poem called The Thousand Character Classic. Choosing 120 symbols from this poem subdivided into 8 categories, Cheung Leung devised a lottery game that required players to correctly guess the contents of one whole category.consequently, winner was rewarded with a prize, most commonly ten taels, the form of Chinese currency at that time.
The game became popularly known as the Chinese lottery, and as the game of the White Pigeon, since white doves were used to relay messages of winner's names all over the Chinese countryside.
The game became so popular that soon every Chinese citizen was playing it, and profits increased that soon proceeds from the game were used to build one of the greatest Chines monuments of all time, the Great Wall of China.
Keno came to America in the 19th century brought by Chinese sailors and Chinese railroad workers who went to America to work on the trans-Pacific railroad or hunt gold. The game became a big underground hit in San Francisco. Since lotteries were considered illegal during that time, players changed its name to horserace keno, since, unlike keno, horse racing wasn't an illegal activity.
In 1963, however, the government decided to put a tax on horseracing, effectively legalizing the game, and so players dropped the horse racing portion of the name and started to call the game keno again.
Since then keno has grown to become a very casino game online and offline, and is even used to generate funds for civic, military, and charitable events.