Keno is a very popular game among the various online casinos. Before you start playing Keno online, you should find out about keno history, which goes a long way back, and as far away as china.

The start of Keno History – Keno in China

Keno history is a long and interesting journey that has evolved over the years the casino game has existed. There is an ancient scroll that states keno history started more than 2000 years ago in China. Cheung Leung was the leader who invented the game in an effort to save his city.

The citizens refused to keep funding his war through taxes, and the army ran out of supplies so the city was in danger of losing the war. Leung introduced a lottery game that helped fund the supplies for the army, and this way the city was saved.

the Keno game quickly spread through China, opening in various casinos and parlors, and this helped fund the building of the Great Wall of China. This is the first mark keno history had on the world, with the funding of this building wonder.

Back in the early keno history days, the game was known as the White Pigeon Game because gamblers used pigeons to transfer the winning scores of the game between players. This game had similar Rules as modern keno has.

The ancient Chinese keno game used characters instead of the numbers we use today. All of these 80 characters were taken from the famous poem ‘The Thousand Character Classic’, an ancient children’s reading and writing skills book.

Keno History Continues – The Move to America

Keno history moved to America when the Chinese immigrants started working on the railroads. Initially, the game was considered illegal in casinos because of anti-gambling laws. Nevertheless, it was popular among the Chinese immigrants, and was thus called Chinese lottery. Around this time the keno characters were changed into numbers.

When Gambling was legalized in 1931, lotteries were still considered illegal in all of the various casinos around the US. Casinos at that time wanted to keep the game, so they changed it into a so called horse racing game. Instead of plain numbers, numbers of horses were bet on. Some of the features of keno remained throughout keno history, and one of these is the fact it’s called a racing game. This is also the time when keno was given its name, which was shortened from ‘horse race keno’. A few years later, the lottery prohibition was removed, and the government started to tax horse betting, thus the game was again changed to Keno.

In 1963 the keno payout limit in Nevada casinos was $25,000. In 1979 it was doubled to $50,000. In 1989 the limit was removed, and now casinos are free to set their limits as they please. Keno history has certainly made a long way, and with online keno just added in recent years to various online casinos, it is expected to increase its popularity even more.

Keno also has a link to bingo, and include many of the bingo casino rules, because the games developed from the same origin.

Debbie Graham – Section Editor 2006-06-18