The Interesting History of Keno
The history of keno goes a very long way back to the faraway land of China. Keno's history is a very long and fascinating journey, which has evolved as the years go by, ever since the existence of casino games. An ancient scroll in China reveals that for more than 2,000 years ago, keno was already present.
A certain Chinese leader named Cheung Leung invented keno in order to save the people and the city. The game was used to fund the armies' supplies and thus resulted to saving the city and its people. After this event, keno become popular in China quickly and is played in many parlors and casinos. And keno even helped in funding the construction of the Great Wall of China.
In the early days of keno, the game wan then called as the White Pigeon Game for the reason that all players used pigeons to carry the winning scores between the players. The ancient game of keno used Chinese characters back then. A famous Chinese poem entitled "The Thousand Character Classic" was the source of all the 80 characters in ancient keno. The poem is used anciently for children to learn how to read and write.
Keno reached in America because of the many Chinese immigrants that worked on the building of railroads. At first, keno was illegal in any casino due to the prevailing anti-gambling laws. However, its popularity thrived among the Chinese immigrants and was then called the Chinese lottery. At this time, those 80 Chinese characters in keno were replaced by numbers.
In 1931, even though gambling was already legalized, lotteries continued to be considered as illegal in many US casinos. There are casinos that want to maintain keno in their list of casino games so they changed the game and called it the horse racing game. The plain numbers were replaced by the numbers of horses that players can bet on.
Many features of the keno game still remained throughout the years such as the idea of keno as a racing game. This is the time that the name keno was officially used for the game as a shortened term of "horse racing keno". The prohibition on lotteries was removed a few years after and then the US government begin taxing horse betting, that results to changing the game and its name to just keno.
In the early 1960s to the late 1980s, the payout of keno is limited to a certain amount. But in 1989, the removal of the payout limit happened and now every casino is free to set their own payout limits as it pleases them.
In recent years, keno has become available online as well. And because of this development, keno will continue to increase its popularity in the world of casino games.