Keno is another casino game with its roots in ancient times. The game originated in China during one of their wars. Legend has it that the creator came up with the game in order to help fund the army as the people were ruining themselves trying to keep up with the costs of the war. Taking 120 characters from a teaching poem, he laid them out on a board very much like a modern lotto ticket.

Counters were tossed on this board and people would wager on where the counter would land. Curiously enough, the players could mark the places with ink giving rise to the term Keno spots. Players were allowed up to ten bets per cast. Apparently, the game worked as desired and the proceeds saved the creator’s village and then spread from there to the rest of China. The game was nicknamed “Great White Pigeon Game” as they would use white pigeons to send messages with the results of bets onto other cities.

Just like a lot of other casino games, America has made it’s mark on the game of Keno. When the game arrived in America in the middle of the 19th century with Chinese immigrants, the Americans quickly reduced the characters down to only 80 to simplify things. Of course, Americans found the characters too hard to pronounce but they wanted to play the new gambling game. To accommodate them, some enterprising Chinese changed it to numbers although the Americans still called it the Chinese Lottery.

An American changed the game a bit more until it became the game we recognize at casinos everywhere. The first Keno game to be found in a casino was in Nevada in 1936. The owner, Warren Nelson, invented a rotating cage with numbered wooden balls. The Keno numbers were read off as the balls were drawn from the cage. Today Keno still stands as one of the most popular casino games, both offline and at online casinos.