The background of Keno
by Abel on Monday, August 4th, 2025
Keno was first played in 200 before Christ by the Chinese military commander, Cheung Leung who utilized this game as a financial resource for his declining army. The city of Cheung was at war, and after a bit of war time appeared to be facing country wide shortage of food with the drastic drop in supplies. Cheung Leung needed to come up with a quick fix for the financial disaster and to create revenue for his forces. He therefore developed the game we now know as keno and it was a wonderful success.
Keno once was referred to as the White Pigeon Game, because the winning numbers were delivered by pigeons from bigger municipalities to the smaller towns. The lottery ‘Keno’ was imported to the US in the 19th century by Chinese expatriates who came to the United States to work. In those times, Keno was played with 120 numbers.
Today, Keno is most often enjoyed with 80 numbers in almost all of the US based casinos as well as internet casinos. Keno is largely liked today as a consequence of the relaxed nature of wagering the game and the basic fact that there are no expertise required to play Keno. Despite the fact that the chances of succeeding are horrible, there is constantly the hope that you might hit quite large with little gaming investment.
Keno is played with eighty numbers with 20 numbers picked each round. Players of Keno can choose from two to ten numbers and wager on them, as much or as little as they want to. The pay out of Keno is according to the wagers made and the roll out of matching numbers.
Keno has grown in popularity in the US since the end of the 19th century when the Chinese letters were replaced with , American numbers. Lotteries were not covered under the laws of wagering in Nevada State in Nineteen Thirty One. The casinos altered the name of the ‘Chinese lotto’ to ‘horse race keno’ employing the idea that the numbers are horses and you want your horses to come in. When a law passed that taxed off track betting, casinos quickly adjusted the name to ‘Keno’.
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