Around 200 A.D, Cheung Leung, belonging to Han dynasty, introduced this game. Players were required to select a character set out of the 120 symbols. These symbols were further subdivided into sub-categories, about 8 in number. Random combinations were drawn by the emperor for two times each day. If gamblers lost on one sub-category, 3 additional bets were lost whereas if gamblers won on a particular sub-category, ten additional bets were won. Hence, this game was also referred as Chinese lottery.
The results of the lottery were sent through messenger doves over the tremendous domain of the emperor. Hence, the game also started being referred by these white pigeons. This lottery was called as “idiot taxes” by certain Chinese scholars as Cheung Leung used the generated money for reinstating the army and building Great wall. Nevertheless, Cheung Leung’s name always appears in the origin of keno for being responsible for creating this game.
Although illegal, keno thrived among Chinese immigrants, especially around big cities like San Francisco. It became known as the Chinese lottery. English speaking Americans became interested in the game, but had difficulty differentiating the Chinese characters used in the game. Around the beginning of the 20th century, keno operators replaced the Chinese characters with Arabic numbers to entice more players.
Although Nevada legalized most forms of gambling in 1931, the legislature did not legalize lottery. And the Chinese lottery was definitely a lottery. To get around this pain in the neck, operators simply changed the name to “Race Horse Keno”. Each number was deemed to be a horse. Today many keno operations still call their games “races”. When the U.S. Government passed a law taxing off track betting, the name was once again changed, this time to just keno.