The Origins of Keno
According to ancient Chinese scrolls, a game similar to keno was originally introduced by Cheung Leung of the Han Dynasty around 200 BC. As a result of Cheung's city having been at war for several years, the army was starting to run out of supplies and the citizenry refused to contribute more money to the war effort. So Cheung created a numbers game not unlike keno in order to finance his military. The game was an instant success and played a large role in saving the city. Keno then quickly spread through the rest of China, and was used to help fund the creation of the Great Wall. The game became known as the White Pigeon Game because carrier pigeons were utilized to spread word of the winning numbers from the keno games from the big cities to the small villages and hamlets.
In its original format, keno was based largely on an ancient Chinese poem of a thousand numbers known as the 'Thousand Character Classic'. These were a set of independent characters placed in a rhymed form and were originally intended as a means of teaching children, the poem eventually became so ingrained in the Chinese culture that the characters were often used as a romantic numbering system. These 120 characters were the original keno boards. It wasn't until the game left China that the number dropped to the more familiar 80.
In the 19th Century the game was imported to America along with the Chinese immigrants imported who helped build the railroads of the Old West. Keno remained a favorite of the Chinese immigrants and their descendants, to the point where it became known as 'The Chinese Lottery" around San Francisco. While popular within the various Chinatowns of American cities, the game didn't catch on with mainstream American culture since it used the traditional Chinese characters. It wasn't until the end of the 19th Century that the characters were finally replaced with the more familiar numeric system.
In 1931, gambling was legalized in the state of Nevada. Although lotteries were not covered under the legislature, the name of the 'Chinese Lottery' was simply changed to 'Horse Race Keno'. The idea was that it was no longer a lottery but that the numbers were theoretical horses and players want their particular horses to come in. When the government passed a law taxing off-track betting, Nevada's casinos quickly changed the name of the game yet again, this time shortening it to simply "keno".
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