Most of the basic online casino games that are played today have originated from live casino games. These in turn have originated from gambling games that were played in medieval or ancient times. Keno is one such game that originated in ancient China, made its way to keno halls and live casinos and from there to cyberspace.

The origin Keno dates back to between 187 B.C. and 205 B.C. in China when the Han Dynasty was in power. It originated in the most unusual circumstances. There war a war in progress and the end was nowhere in sight. The state treasury was empty and the ruler was hard pressed to pay for weapons and provisions for the army. The citizens were either unable to pay or refused to pay because of the protracted nature of the war. It was then a man named Cheung came up with a brilliant plan. He devised a gambling game in which small bets were laid by a large number of people. From the funds collected by way of the wagers, a part went to pay the winner and a part went to finance the war. The funds collected were so large that the winner received an amount beyond his wildest dreams and hence the game became very popular. The game was again revitalized when the Great Wall of China was being built and funds were required for that purpose. Thereafter the game was played because it was popular.

The Chinese did not use numbers as is done in keno today. Many characters were chosen from a poem named “The Thousand Character Classic”. This was a sort of textbook used to teach children to speak Chinese. The characters were simple figures like “cloud” or “dew”. People spread out all over China bet on specific characters. The winning characters were drawn in the big cities and sent to rural areas using courier pigeons. Therefore this game came to be known as the “White Pigeon Game”.

From ancient China the game came to America in the 1850s. The trans-continental railroad was being built and a huge labor force was required. This arrived in the form of Chinese migrants. These migrants brought with them the White Pigeon Game. Soon the game caught on with the other communities in America. When it was first noticed it was being played with Chinese characters and was therefore called “Chinese Lottery”. In order that the non-Chinese could play the game the Chinese characters were changed to Arabic numerals. At that time five winning numbers were called and therefore the French in America used to call it “quine” for five and this got corrupted to keno.