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Keno is very similar to a lotto game, thanks to its original format being just that. Traced back over 3,000 years in China, the game’s creator is accredited as being Cheung Leung according to ancient Chinese scrolls. The Chinese are thought to have invented this game to fund their army and the creation of The Great Wall.

Keno originally used 120 Chinese characters, although the number was reduced to 90 before the game left China and travelled to America in the 19th century with Chinese immigrants who were drafted into working on the great railroads of that time. The game became known as Chinese lottery and although illegal in that day, it thrived in some of the bigger cities, especially San Francisco. The game altered slightly with a further reduction to 80 Chinese characters.

Interest in the game grew amongst English speaking Americans around the start of the 20th century. In order to solve the problem they had in deciphering the Chinese characters, Chinese Lotto operators replaced them with Arabic numerals to procure more players to the game.

When in 1931, Nevada legalised most forms of gambling, that legislature did not include lottery. To circumvent this problem, operators altered the name to Race Horse Keno, where each number was said to represent a horse. To this day many keno operators know the games as “races”. To avoid further taxation interference by the U.S. Government when it passed laws taxing off track betting, operators simply changed the name to Keno.