Wondering where the game of Keno even came from? The place was Las Vegas, the year was 1985. Just kidding. Keno has been around longer than you could probably even wrap your head around. As one of the oldest ever gambling games, its roots were formed in China during the Han Dynasty about 3,000 years ago.
Now this wasn’t some seedy, back alley creation that enraptured impoverished peasants. On the contrary, Keno was masterminded by China’s ruler of the day, Cheung Leung, who needed more money to fund yet another endless war but had already over taxed his people. So what was he to do? Rather cunningly, he decided to create Keno as a means to derive funding through ticket sales, essentially becoming the world’s first profitable casino.
Legend has it Keno was also used once again, many years later, to fund the construction of the Great Wall of China (don’t quote me on this as it’s not entirely verified). The actual, official Chinese lottery only became licensed in the 1800s so it’s interesting to note that the urge to try your luck manifested well before the law properly caught up.
So have the ravages of time had an impact on how Keno is played today? Yes indeed. In fact, the original game was quite different, played with 120 different Chinese characters rather than the 80 numbers used today. To make things easier for us Westerners, the far simpler use of numbers has taken their place. However, if you took the time to travel to China to play Keno, you’ll find that they still use Chinese characters, but these have also been reduced to 80.
Keno’s Journey To The West
So how did Keno even make it to the shores of the West? Well, as is the case with many of our staples such as tea, coffee and spices, Keno washed up in San Francisco along with the hordes of Chinese sailors. These young men were keen to share the gambling thrills with the unsuspecting Americans, and changed all the Chinese characters to numbers to help ramp up American uptake.
It worked!
It worked so well that Keno stuck around long after the Chinese sailors had boarded their ships and sailed away. The only problem was that since lotteries were illegal in the US at the time, Keno had to be transformed in order to pass scrutiny.
That’s how it became ‘Racehorse Keno’, where names of horses were used instead of numbers on the tickets, and each drawing was called a race. If all your horses were drawn, you were a winner. The game was therefore able to bypass the restrictions set by state laws and Keno nestled comfortably into a lovely grey area.
Once lotteries were made legal, most casinos dropped the pretence and called a spade a spade, but if you look hard enough you’ll still find casinos, both online and not, that will let you play that old iconic game of Racehorse Keno.
How Popular Is Keno In Canada?
I like to think of Keno as Bingo’s more obscure cousin. Despite outranking Bingo in terms of historical duration, many people are still unaware of the game, let alone how to play it. Canada is no exception here. This being said, recent years have seen an upswing in Keno’s popularity.
With its increased listing on online casinos, more and more people are being exposed to the way this game is played. Its appeal doesn’t just lie with the possibility of big money if you get Keno winning numbers, more and more players are also being drawn to the notion of a full-blown instant lottery. So if you’re the kind of online gamer that likes to play for real money and instant thrills, Keno may well be the game for you.
Once you’ve chosen your