Keno – The Early Years

With all the many different casino games that are so hugely popular on the Internet nowadays, it is hardly surprising that keno would come in at the top of the list. Everyone who has ever tried keno at one time or another already knows just how enjoyable the game is, and how refreshingly stress-free a game it is unlike so many other fast-paced casino type games. Nevertheless, keno retains enough of an element of excitement at its core that makes its so engrossing for so many casino players weaned on more intense, action-packed games.

Keno had actually existed in some form for thousands of years, long before it became the casino favorite that it is today. In ancient China, there was a version of the game known as “White Pigeon Game”, which was similar to modern-day keno in many ways. There is an interesting story behind this quaint name, and it stems from the use of white pigeons to deliver news of the outcomes of the games to players from far-off villages. The game was supposedly the brainchild of one Cheung Leung who was an officer in the military. In a similar fund-raising purpose that the game is used for to this day, “White Pigeon Game” was used to drum up funds for the war, particularly around 200 B.C. This goal was in fact so successful that the game not only provided some much needed funds to the war coffers, but it was also enough to partly pay for the cost of building the Great Wall of China! Such was the popularity of that early version of keno, and it is no less popular to this very day.

By the 19th century, keno had found a new audience in America, where the game was introduced to the local population by Chinese immigrants. It was then known as “Chinese lottery”, and it was a bit slow to catch on, initially being popular only in the Chinese districts. It wouldn’t take long for the game to spread out to the surrounding areas however, and after a few minor modifications–the traditional Chinese characters were changed to numbers for instance–it began to resemble to the modern-day version of the game as we now know it.

This was only a foretaste of things to come, as keno eventually made its way to an even bigger audience, when it was introduced in Vegas casinos in the 1930s. At this point, the increasing popularity of the game was unstoppable, a situation that remains in place to this day.

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