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According to ancient Chinese scrolls, ruler Cheung Leung started keno in China over 2000 years ago. Cheung's city was at war for several years and was beginning to run out of supplies and the city was in danger. The people of his city refused to contribute any more to his war fund, so the resourceful Cheung created a game of chance to produce revenue for his army.
The game, keno, was an instant success. Leung's game produced enough cash revenue to supply his army with all that they needed, and the city was saved. Of course, those who won were happy too!
Spreading throughout China in the years that followed, keno was used to help fund the building of the Great Wall, which has become a world-renowned wonder. The game became known as the White Pigeon Game because carrier pigeons were used to communicate the winning results (winning numbers) of the game from the larger cities to the small villages and hamlets in the countryside.
Leung's version of the game differed slightly from the one we know and enjoy today. In the earliest versions of keno, Chinese characters, all taken from a famous poem were used in the body of the ticket rather than numbers 1 through 80. These characters are the first eighty of an ancient poem known as "The Thousand Character Classic". Many years ago, the poem was used as a means of teaching children reading and writing skills. By putting one thousand characters into a rhymed form, learning was made easier and more interesting. The fact that not one of the thousand characters was mentioned more than once was recognized as a great achievement.
This poem was so well known in China that its one thousand characters, arranged in order, were often used as a way of counting from one to a thousand so when Leung used the first 80 characters from the poem, he did in fact use one through eighty as they are represented today.
Remaining basically the same, keno was brought to the United States by Chinese immigrants who labored on the railroad in the Old West, where it is still played. Initially, the game was illegal under U.S. anti-gambling laws; but remained very popular among the Chinese immigrants, where it was known as Chinese lottery.
The United States legalized most types of gambling in 1931 but not lotteries, so the name was changed to 'horse race keno', with the idea that the numbers represented horses and that players were betting on the one that would come in. The result of this association with horse racing earned keno the nickname 'racing game', which is still used among keno operators today.
When the American government decided to tax off-track betting, the name was again changed a better profit. This is how the game got its name - Keno.
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