The History of Keno: From Ancient China To America

Keno's history is very interesting indeed. If it were not for the ingenuity of an ancient dude named Cheung Leung, we'd all be a keno-less bunch today, and professional players would spend their lives wondering what's missing in their lives.

However, luckily for all gamblers everywhere (no pun intended), Cheung Leung was around during the Han dynasty, the time when the game was created.

Keno was born out of Cheung Leung's need to raise some money to fund his war. His city was being attacked from all sides by foreign invaders, mean guys who meant business. Cheung Leung's men, however, were getting tired. They were low on food and supplies, and most probably they all wanted to go home. The people were no help either. It seems like they were paying more taxes than they intended to pay, and they were not planning on paying any more.

Cheung Leung understood this, and began to think of a plan that will allow him to continue his war and keep his city happy at the same time.

In comes the Thousand Character Classic, a popular ancient Chinese poem written by Zhou Xingsi. This poem was often used by Chinese parents to teach youngsters to count and write. it was composed of a thousand characters (hence the name), divided into 250 phrases made up of 4 symbols each. Cheung Leung chose 120 characters from the poem and created 8 subdivisions out of these.

Players had to guess the contents of a subdivision and if they did so correctly they won. The prize was usually ten taels, what the Chinese used for money at that time.

The game fortunately for him was a major hit, and soon many people were playing it. It gave Cheung Leung his much needed money, and even more to help build the Great Wall of China. The people called it the game of the White Pigeon, because white doves were the couriers used to relay messages to the far flung Chinese countryside about winning combinations and winning names.

The game traveled to America along with Chinese immigrants, sailors and railroad workers. The game became a crowd drawer in San Francisco, which has a thriving Chinese community. It became known in the underground as the Chinese lottery, but very few Americans knew how to play the game at first. By the time the 20th century rolled in the Chinese characters were replaced with more understandable numbers to attract more American players.

Since then keno has been used in community, school, and even military fund raising events. When the Nevada state legislature decided to legalize gambling but excluded keno, keno operators stepped around this and promptly renamed the game horse race keno, because horse racing was already allowed at that time. When off track betting was finally legalized, operators changed the name back to keno, and the game's name has never been changed again.