History of Keno

If it appears that Keno is a lot like a lotto game, that's because keno is a lotto game. The name has changed many times in the game's 3000-year history, mostly to circumvent the law, or taxes, or both.

By all accounts, the Chinese invented the game during the Han Dynasty, in order to fund their army and the building of The Great Wall.

Keno started out played in Chinese, using 120 characters drawn from the Thousand Character Book written by Confucious. Before the game left China, that number was reduced to 90. The game was introduced to America by the new wave of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century. It was then that the game was reduced to 80 Chinese characters, the same number that the game still uses today.

Although illegal, Keno thrived among Chinese immigrants, particularly in the bigger cities like San Francisco, where it became known as the Chinese lottery. English speaking Americans became interested in the game, but had difficulty differentiating the Chinese characters that were used. It was for this reason that Keno operators replaced the Chinese characters with Arabic numbers. After this Keno was welcomed into American mainstream culture.

Back in those days, the usual ticket was a ten-spot – ten numbers were selected by the player. Payouts ranged from 1 for 1 if numbers came up, right up to 3000 for 1 if all ten numbers came up.

Although Nevada legalized most forms of gambling in 1931, the legislature did not legalize Keno. To get around this nuisance, operators simply changed the name to Race Horse Keno. Each number was deemed to be a horse. Today many keno operations still call their games "races". When the U.S. Government passed a law taxing off track betting, the name was once again changed, this time to just Keno.

In 1963 the aggregate keno payout limit in Nevada was $25,000. In 1979 it was changed to $50,000. In 1989 the Nevada Gaming Commission eliminated the cap, and casinos are now free to set their aggregate limits as they wish.

The was an error performing the Search. Please try again later.
The system cannot find the path specified.