One of the most popular games at any casino is Keno. It is a game similar to the big state or provincial lotteries. This game originates from China where it was first introduced by Cheung Leung in 187 BC. But the appearance of keno is wrapped in a mystery. Several different versions exist.
The generally accepted theory is that the game was invented during some war in China when the army needed money badly. The head of state had no money support of his subjects. So Cheung was left scratching his head as to how to generate the necessary finances to continue his brutal battles. Finally, Cheung had the brilliant idea of creating a game that would appeal to the huge numbers of people under his command, while simultaneously generating a bit of cash to cover his expenses. Thus Cheung's army was saved. The Great Wall was also built with the help of the money that gave keno! Later keno was known as the White Pigeon game as people of surrounding villages were informed of the winning numbers by carrier pigeons.
In the past rather than having a board of just numbers on the original keno boards, they used classic Chinese characters. If at first the game included 120 characters, this number dropped to 80 in the course of time.
Keno appeared in the US in the 19th century as a lot of Chinese people came there to work on the railroads. At the beginning keno was out of law. But it wasn't a real obstacle for the immigrants. It continued to use Chinese characters and thus obviously didn't enter popular mainstream American culture until it was modified to include the numerical system.

 

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