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 Keno is one of the oldest gambling games to found within a casino. According to reports, the game of Keno originated in China over 2000 years ago where a man by the name of Cheung Leung of the Han dynasty who invented it. Around the same time, China was involved in a war which was draining national reserves. This game came to the aid of financing the war through revenue that was generated from the games popularity. The game of Keno quickly became popular through China and was generating vast sums of money. Various sources also state that the Great Wall of China was even funded through Keno draws. As popularity grew for the game throughout China, the game took on the name of White Pigeon due to having to use pigeons to deliver results between cities and villages.
Today’s game has evolved from the way Leung first invented it, he used characters that were depicted in a poem called “The Thousand Character Classic”. The poem contained names of characters that rhymed with each other and the names were never repeated throughout the entire poem. Many children were taught this poem as a way of learning reading and writing skills, however, many people also referred to the poem as a way of learning to count from one to a thousand due to the number of characters. It was through this that Leung picked up on using the first eighty characters from the poem as a way of representing one to eighty for the game.
The game moved to the United States of America through the arrival of Chinese immigrants in the 19th Century. They Chinese were settling in the West Coast of American, helping to build the new railroad system that was being implemented at the time. They quickly established the game there and as such the game became known as Chinese lottery. As English speaking Americans were having difficulty interpreting the Chinese symbols, the game had to change its Chinese characters to Arabic to entice the English speaking Americans to play.
In order for the game to become legalised in America, the game had to go through more changes. Americans had recognised the game as a form of a lottery and whilst some forms of gambling were becoming legalised, lottery games were not part of the legislation. In order for the game to be played legally, the name was changed to Race Horse Keno with each playing number being termed as a horse. A few years later, America had decided to start taxing off-track betting and therefore the game had to be re-invented again. This time the game was now being referred to as Keno in order for players to gain a better profit whilst playing.
Keno is now mainly played in casinos; however, with the modern world constantly evolving, technology has meant that Keno is available to play online. Many casinos offer players the chance to play online with all the same rules as in house play. This has meant that the game is more accessible to players now as the vast majority of people have access to the internet.
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