Keno History

One of the oldest games in the history of casinos is Keno. The word Keno has its roots in Latin or French and loosely translates to their word for five. The origins of Keno actually date back more than three thousand years to the Han Dynasty. One of the rulers of the Han Dynasty, Cheung Leung is credited with being the first one to play keno.

While the true Keno history may never be known, most do believe that Leung did in fact start the game as a means of creating revenue for his dynasty. Back in 200 B.C. the Han Dynasty was in dire need of supplies for their war. Citizens of the dynasty did not want to contribute to the war and so it was Cheung who came up the idea of a game of chance to fund the war.

The original games of chance Cheung created were instantly successful and made quite a bit of money for the dynasty’s war fund. It is rumored also that Keno playing was used to fund the building of the Great Wall of China.

At the time Keno was first played it was based on a Chinese poem that had more than one thousand characters. This poem, written by Zhou Xingsi, had 250 four character phrases and used 120 Chinese characters. Soon the number of characters used was reduced to 90.

As Keno history states, the game was brought to the Americas by Chinese immigrants you were brought here to work on railroads in the west, namely around San Francisco. That was about the time that the Keno board was reduced once again to 80 numbers. Once introduced in the area, Keno became an instant success, even though at that time all forms of gambling were illegal. As its popularity grew, the Chinese characters originally used were changed to numbers so that American players would have an easier time.

It wasn’t until 1931 that gambling in any form became legal in Nevada, but the legislature at that time didn’t recognize lotteries as legal gambling and Keno was considered a lottery game. The only reason that Keno was considered a lottery was because it was called the ‘Chinese Lottery’. And so the easiest thing to was to change the name of the game. The ‘Chinese Lottery’ became known as Horse Race keno. The numbers were supposed to represent horses in a race and players would pick how they thought the ‘race’ would turn out and which ‘horses’ would take the top spots even though Keno really has nothing to do with horses or racing.

Still today most rounds of drawing numbers in Keno are still called ‘races’. When the government began to tax off-track horse race winnings, the name of the game was shortened to its current name, Keno.

Even though Keno wasn’t being taxed, the payout was limited. In 1963 the highest payout for a Keno game was limited to $25,000 in Nevada. That cap was raised in 1979 to $50,000 payout per game. For avid Keno players the big change came in 1989 when the Nevada State Gaming Commission completely eliminated the cap on Keno winnings.