Online Keno Origins

The origin of keno dates back to 200 BC, China, when Cheung Leung introduced the game that is known today as keno. Cheung’s city was at war for several years and was beginning to run out of supplies. Cheung created this game of chance to produce revenue for his army and due to its instant success the city was saved. Becaming popular throughout China, keno was used to help fund the building of the Great Wall. 

In the ancient versions of keno, in the body of the ticket characters were used rather than numbers 1 through 80. These characters are the first eighty of an ancient poem known as "The Thousand Character Classic", that was used in China as the second handbook for teaching reading and writing to children. By putting one thousand characters into a more or less coherent rhymed form, learning was apparently made easier and more interesting .

It is a very great achievement in that no character is repeated. This poem was so popular in China that its one thousand characters, set in order, were often used as an alternative way of notation or counting from one to a thousand.