The History of the Chinese Lottery

Keno is known as the Chinese lottery since the earliest reports point to ancient China as its place of origin. Back in the Han dynasty at around 200 B.C> an ancient Chinese city was under attack. The city's leader, a guy named Cheung Leung, was leading a valiant effort to defend the city with his army.

However, the battle dragged on, and supplies and the strength of his army were beginning to dwindle. To add to his troubles the city's inhabitants were getting tired of the battle, and were no longer willing to pay more taxes to support Cheung Leung and his men.

Faced with this dilemma, Cheung Leung decided to find a way to raise funds for his war and at the same time keep the people happy by not taking out the cost on their taxes.

Using the age old Chinese poem titled The Thousand Character Classic, Cheung Leung devised a lottery that required the players to make a guess. If the guess proved correct the winner was awarded a prize, usually ten taels, the form of money at that time.

The Thousand Character Classic was a poem written by Zhou Xingsi, a prominent ancient poet. It was composed of a thousand characters which was arranged into The poem was popular all over ancient China, and it was taught to you phrases. It was taught to Chinese children to help them read and count.

Out of the poem Cheung Leung created subdivisions of eight using one hundred and twenty characters.Players who participated had to correctly guess the contents of a subdivision in order to win.

Soon the game of keno became a big hit. Keno was able to provide Cheung Leung the money he needed to continue defending his city, and it proved to be an excellent diversion for the people.Soon people began calling the game the game of the white pigeon, since operators flew white doves all over the countryside with messages attached to their legs about winning combinations and names, since no other means of long-distance communication was available at that time.

The game became so popular, in fact, that proceeds from it were responsible in the construction of the Great Wall of China.

From China keno was brought to America by Chinese immigrants, and it became a popular underground game in San Francisco, a city known for its large Chinese community. Initially, the game was played mostly by the Chinese. To entice more American players into playing, the traditional Chinese characters were taken out and replaced by more understandable numbers in the early 20th century.

The game soon made its way to Nevada, which was famous for its gambling. When the Nevada state legislature allowed gambling in the , they forgot to include keno in the list. To get around this, 1930s, operators simply changed the name of the lottery into horse race keno, since horse racing had already been legalized by that time. When they legalized off track betting in they quickly reverted back to the old name, and the game has been called keno ever since.