keno

keno, gambling game played with cards (tickets) bearing numbers in squares, usually from 1 to 80. A player marks or circles as many of these numbers as he wishes up to the permitted maximum, after which he hands in, or registers, his ticket and pays according to how many numbers he selected. At regular daily intervals a total of 20 numbered balls or pellets are randomly drawn from a container, and prizes are paid out by the house according to how many of each player’s selected numbers are drawn.

Keno is of Chinese origin and of great antiquity, dating back at least 2,000 years. The original Chinese name for the game is baige piao or pai-ko p’iao, meaning “white pigeon ticket,” a reference to the tickets used in a betting game involving homing pigeons. From about the 3rd century bce, baige piao games existed in most of the provinces of China, usually arranged by one or more gambling houses with the permission of the province governor, who in turn received a share of the profits.

The original ticket used in baige piao, and still in widespread use in Chinese communities where the game continues to be popular, featured the first 80 characters in Qianziwen (“Book of a Thousand Characters”) instead of numbers. This classic in Chinese literature, by an unknown author, contains exactly 1,000 Chinese ideograms (or characters), all different, and is so well known among educated Chinese that these characters are sometimes used in place of the corresponding numbers from 1 to 1,000.

Baige piao (or pak-a-pu, as it became known in the West) is the ancestor not only of keno but also of lotto and bingo. Keno arrived in the western United States in the 1840s with Chinese immigrants. About the beginning of the 20th century, the game gained popularity among non-Chinese groups in the United States under the name Chinese lottery, in which the characters were converted to numbers. At that time it also acquired the name keno, a corruption of the French word quine (“group of five”). In 1933 keno was introduced in gambling houses in Reno, Nevada, under the name Race-Horse Keno, with names of horses instead of numbers on the tickets so as not to conflict with state laws concerning lotteries. Those Nevada laws were changed in 1951, after which keno became a game with numbers. Today keno is played (with many daily drawings) in nearly all American casinos as well as in many casinos in Australia, South Africa, South America, and East Asia. The house advantage in casino keno is considerable—about 25 percent. Keno is also offered as a game (usually with weekly drawings) by many lottery companies around the world.