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The History of Keno
Gambling Games at Golden Casino
Keno was originally known as The Chinese Lottery. It acquired the name
because this simple form of gambling finds its origins in ancient China. The
original Chinese Lottery was actually a teaching aid that was based on a
children’s rhyme. The purpose of this lengthy rhyme was to teach children
the thousand characters that they needed to learn to read. This poem is
known as "The Thousand Character Classic" and contained one thousand
non-repeating rhymes.
Keno HistoryThe Chinese Lottery evolved from this simple nursery rhyme when
in 200 B.C., Cheung Leung, the legendary Chinese general invented the
gambler’s game. He employed the first 120 characters of the Thousand
Character Classic to create a system of betting. People who marked the right
characters with ink and brush would win prizes. The funds that were raised
as the result of this game were to keep Cheung Leung’s precarious power safe
from invading barbarians.
How Ancient Keno Was Played
Chueng Leung’s ancient Chinese lottery required the players to pick a set of
characters from the selected 120 Chinese symbols. These 120 characters were
also subdivided into eight more sub categories. Twice a day the emperor
would then draw random combinations. If the gamblers lost one subcategory
they would lose three more bets. If they won one subcategory then they would
win ten more bets.
As there was no electricity or phones in ancient China, messenger doves were
sent to deliver the lottery’s results over the imperator’s vast domain. Over
time, the game became to known as the White Pigeon Game.
The game that was usually played once in the morning and once in the
evening. It was so popular that Chueng Lueng’s government was able to
reinstate its army after just ten lottery drawings. Some Chinese scholars
called this form of lottery “idiot taxes”. The indirect tax gathered from
this type of gaming over the long term managed to totally fund the
construction of the Great Wall of China.
In modern day China, this form of keno is still called the Thousand
Character classic and is still played twice a day. Eighty characters are
chosen from a thousand characters and arranged in divisions on a card. Ten
characters make up one division. Players can wager whatever amount of money
that they like on each subcategory, depending on what kind of variation of
the game they are playing to increase their winnings.
Keno Arrives in North America
Nobody in North America had heard of the Chinese lottery until the
nineteenth century, when the game was brought by Chinese immigrants to
California. These immigrants were lured to North America by the Gold Rush.
Instead of mining gold, they found themselves working as low paid laborers
building the North American railroads. It was not long before the Chinese
lottery soon caught on in California and also in Nevada, which was already
developing its lucrative gambling industry.
The term keno was actually the original name for bingo. The Chinese Lottery
was nicknamed "Horse Race Keno" in America by gaming businesses in Nevada to
evade criminal prosecution. Lotteries were considered illegal at the time
but horse races weren’t. Casino operators operated fictional horse races and
each number was representative of a fictional horse. The challenge for the
players was to pick the winning “horses.” Even today keno is sometimes
called “the races”. Casino players might say they are “off to the races” or
to “the race game.”
To play original Horse Race Keno eighty numbers were written on pieces of
paper and then deposited into cardboard tubes. Twenty numbers on these slips
of paper were drawn for each game from the stacked rows of tubes. Eventually
these stuffed paper tubes were replaced by wooden balls that were
subsequently nicknamed “peas”. These balls would subsequently be replaced by
bouncing plastic ping-pong balls with numbers on them.
In the American version of the Chinese Lottery, the quantity of numbers that
you select on a keno ticket is nicknamed a spot. For example, a player who
marks a keno ticket and picks 8 spots on a $4 ticket would be playing a $4
eight spot ticket. If you choose 30 numbers at $1 each you would be playing
a $1 thirty spot ticket.
The term “spot” was first used in the original Chinese Lottery. Because in
ancient China, the numbers chosen were marked with a brush and ink, they
were called spots. The reason ink was used is that it made the bet
indelible, so that it could not be changed at the last moment. There are
still a couple of casinos in Las Vegas that mark “spots” on keno cards in
the traditional fashion. Still other casinos punch a hole through the paper
slip on which the numbers are written.
Keno in Modern America
By 1963, the United States government decided to tax the proceeds of horse
track racing, including revenue earned from Keno Horse Racing. At this point
the casinos in Nevada dropped the Horse Race part of the game’s name and
just called it keno. Until 1989, nobody was allowed to win more than $50,000
playing keno in Nevada but since then the amount of the jackpots have zoomed
sky high.
Since then keno has also become a popular game on the Internet. Lottery
versions of keno are also very common around the world. These lottery style
games are also used by governments to raise money for all kinds of civic,
military and charitable purposes. These games are offered daily or weekly
and the winning numbers are usually published in the newspaper or announced
on the radio and television.
Keno Info has a great article about the history of keno too, so you should
take a look at that if you're still interested in the subject.
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