118 Gambling - History of Keno

History of Keno

You would expect a game that had been invented 3 millenniums ago to be the oldest game in any casino, but the truth is we cannot say that Keno is the oldest, because we might just find another game dating back 4000 years. Keno was invented by Cheung Leung, the ruler of Han Dynasty. The city controlled by Leung was at war during this time, and this had sucked the city dry from all its resources and funds. This also caused the residents to not pay taxes, so Leung came up with an idea that would help fill the city’s coffers, at the same time minimize tax.

Keno 3 millenniums ago, was kind of similar to how gamblers play it today. At the time, Keno was invented around a popular poem, and today people use that same poem in order to learn counting, using a thousand symbols related to Chinese. The symbols were made up of 250 phrases and each were 4 characters long. The poet was Zhou Xingsi. Of the 250 phrases, only 120 were really used. To control the losing and the winning, whoever guessed what the right subdivision was awarded 10 taels. Taels were a Chinese currency at the time. The game is still played the same; instead the thousand-symbol classic is brought down to just eighty.

The game was a success, and with this Cheung Leung was able to make enough money to not surrender the war. The popularity of the game spread very quickly and it was known as Game of White Pigeon. It got this name, because Keno was played in cities and main towns. Whoever lost and those that won, the news was relayed to the countryside using a dove. Keno spread like cancer across the country and everybody was playing it. Many of us have always wondered how China’s Great Wall was built. Well, the wall was paid for and funded by all Keno draws.

Keno only left China the way it was invented at the start of the 20th century, and although is showed its face, people were already trying their luck with raffles and lotteries. The evidence to that was when a widow of a Flemish painter started raffling what was left of her lost love’s work to survive. Lottery came into existence in the year 1515. Long before Keno reached the shores of the United States, lotteries and raffles were used to improve hospitals, jails, libraries, courthouses, and orphanages during 1790 and 1860.

San Francisco was always known to attract gamblers, deviates and many other people, and it was here where Keno was accepted and first played. When Keno was first brought to the United States by the Chinese sailors, it was not long before it became a success and everybody started playing it. This made gambling, lotteries and also raffles forbidden by law. Nonetheless, the game was still enjoyed and the Chinese symbols were changed to numerals to facilitate the American players’ needs.

Gambling was made legal in Nevada in the early 1930s, but lotteries remained illegal. Federal Government described Keno as a lottery, and to prevent it from being illegal, operators of Keno changed the name “Racehorse Keno”. This masked Keno as a gambling game. Each number in the game was now changed to a horse, and the funny part of it, Keno had no relation to horseracing. At many casinos, gamblers noticed that each draw in Keno was referred to a race. The government passed the law of off-track betting and this legalized Keno. Racehorse Keno was then changed back to Keno.