Origin and History of Keno and Lottery
Keno
Keno is a type of lottery game. You buy a ticket, pick a series of numbers that you think will win in the next draw and, if you win, you are paid according to how many you bet on and how much you bet.
Keno is like lotto and bingo, and they are related. But unlike these other numbers games, betting in keno can be done in different ways. There are various types of keno tickets that let you combine your bets in many ways. You can use straight tickets, combination tickets, way tickets, split tickets, king tickets and special tickets given by the casino hosting the game.
Although the odds of this game are awful, people are drawn to them by the jackpot prizes.
Origin of Keno
Keno was born when someone realized that people would rather gamble with their money than give it in support of their government. Historians say that keno was invented in ancient China during the Han Dynasty. There was a war going on and the army was running low on funds. When people refused to donate to the army, they came up with a lottery game instead to get the needed funds. This game was keno.
Originally, players had to pick from 120 Chinese characters. When Chinese immigrants came to America in the 1800s, they reduced the number to 80. Keno then was called Chinese Lottery. Local residents began to play the game too but the foreign characters confused them, and around the 20th century this was changed to Western (Arabic) numbers.
The Chinese lottery was illegal but of course, this did not deter people from playing it. They always found a workaround the laws to play it. When the state of Nevada made gambling legal in the early 1930s, it did not include keno. So keno operators just referred to keno as a horse racing game by name, with each number standing for a "horse." And when the government imposed new taxes on horse racing, they dropped the phrase and just called it keno.
Keno used to have a prize cap, but in 1989 this was removed by the Nevada Gaming Commission. Now anyone hosting keno can put up any prize they want.
Numbers games will always be popular among people. Maybe if the Roman Empire had offered keno games to their provinces instead of imposing taxes, the residents would've been happier!