A Short History Lesson on Keno
Of all the things known about this game, one thing stands out in particular, and that is the fact that this game was born out of sheer necessity. Historical accounts of the game's creation point to the Han dynasty, in 200 B.C., when an ancient Chinese city was being attacked by foreign invaders.
The city's leader, Cheung Leung, was leading the city's fight against the attackers. However, as the fight progressed his army dwindled, and so did the war funds. Soon people were becoming tired and disillusioned by the fight, and they were forcefully refusing the idea that they pay more taxes to support the war effort.
It was up to Cheung Leung then to think of a plan to continue the fight and at the same time keep the people happy. Fortunately enough, Cheung Leung was one smart Chinese cookie. Drawing inspiration from a popular Chinese poem called the Thousand Character Classic, he devised a game that could double as a fund raising tool to help raise funds for his war.
The Thousand Character Classic was a popular poem written by Zhou Xingsi, an equally reputable poet. It contained two hundred and fifty phrases containing four characters each.Out of these Zhou Xingsi took 120 characters, and created subdivisions of eight out of them. According to the game rules, anyone who successfully guessed the contents of a subdivision won a prize, which then was usually ten taels, the currency at that time.
The game took off, and soon everyone was playing it. It soon became so popular that it was able to fund the war effort and even the construction of the Great Wall of China. It was also called the game of the White Pigeon, since birds were the only means of long-distance communication at that time. Pieces of paper containing the names of winning subdivisions ad winning names were tied to white doves' legs, and these birds relayed the messages throughout the Chinese countryside.
Chinese immigrants brought the game with them when they came to America, and the game soon had a following in the San Francisco underground, where it became known as the Chinese lottery. In the early 20th century the traditional Chinese characters were replaced with more American-friendly numbers to attract more players.
The game was also popular in Aemrica's number one gambling state. in the ealry 1930s, when Nevada state legislature decided to legalize gambling but excluded keno, operators decided to change the name of the game to horse race keno, which was already legal at that time. The players pretended that each number was a horse that they wanted to come in.
Not long after that, the government decided to tax off-track betting, and so operators decided to revert to the old name, and the name has not been changed again since!