Keno

Keno is a bingo-like gambling game. Its history can be traced to a Chinese game called "The Game of the White Dove (白鴿票)" invented during the Han Dynasty (187 BC). The name "keno" descends from a form of Bingo or Lotto popular in the USA in the 19th century. There are many references to "Keno" played in a bingo like format in the eastern states prior to the influx of Chinese during the gold rush. The name appears to have been transferred to the similar format Chinese lottery in the late 1800s.

Keno History

The following account of the history of the game is an excerpt from Stewart Culin's paper published in 1891.

This game is an old establishment, and was first introduced by Chéung léung of the great Han Dynasty. When the city was hard pressed, and provisions were beginning to fail, they (the besieged) were anxious to increase the contributions, and to exhort the people to subscribe more for the army, but were unable to do so. Hence they established a game of chance (to guess characters), by which they hoped to tempt the people to hazard their property. In order to fix a method of losing or gaining at hazard, they chose 120 characters for the whole game and eight characters for one subdivision. If the people lost one (whole) subdivision they lost three lí of property; if they gained one division they were rewarded with ten taels. These regulations being once established, who would not sacrifice a little in order to gain much? The two games in the morning and evening were attended by men and women who tried their luck by guessing. They had only opened the game for about ten days, when they had accumulated more than 1000 pieces of silver; and after a few more decades their wealth was boundless. The money thus gained was considered a contribution to the army for the reduction of the empire….

At present the people practice the game as a profession. They borrow the characters from the Thousand Character Classic, of which eighty are chosen and arranged after a new plan, ten characters forming one division, which the people are permitted to purchase for more or less (for whatever they please.)

Three cash gaining ten taels makes the people covet the game without loathing. When they guess five characters they gain five lí; when six characters they gain five candareens; when seven characters they gain five mace; when eight characters they gain two taels and five mace; when nine characters they gain five taels; when ten characters they gain ten taels.

When this game was first established, the houses were often at a great distance, and communication being difficult and the people anxious soon to know the result respecting their gaining or losing, they employed letter doves to carry the news to the parties, whence the present designation: 'The Game of the White Dove.

Stewart Culin (July 13, 1858 - 1929) was an ethnographer and author interested in games, art and dress. He believed that similarity in gaming demonstrated similarity and contact among cultures across the world.

Born Robert Stewart Culin, a son of Mina Barrett Daniel Culin and John Culin, in Philadelphia, Culin was schooled at Nazareth Hall, a well-regarded boy's school in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. While he had no formal education in anthropology, Culin played a role in the development of the field. His interest began with the Asian-American population of Philadelphia, then composed chiefly of Chinese-American laborers. His first published work was an 1887 article entitled The Practice of Medicine by the Chinese in America. In 1889 Culin published a report about Chinese games, a 1890 article about Italian marionettes was inspired by a visit to a marionette theater in New York.

Active in several ethnographic orgnizations during the late 1880's, Culin became involved with the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago during 1891. As an assistant curator, Culin organized several game-related ehibitions. In addition, 1891 saw the publication of two papers. The first treated the street games of city boys, the second dealt with Chinese gambling games, providing explanations of Fan-Tan and Pak Kop Pin). At the World Exposition, Culin met Frank Hamilton Cushing. The two became friends and endeavored to create the first cumulative documentation on the world's games.

Korean games, with comparisions to those of other asian cultures, was the topic of Culin's first book, published in 1895. This work was inspired by Cushing, then of the Bureau of American Ethnology of Washington. Culin became interested in chess and card games and published a paper on the topic in 1886. He worked with Cushing on an article called Arrow games and their variants in America and the Orient. When Cushing became ill, Culin continued the work and eventually published three inter-related papers: American Indian Games (1898), Hawaiian Games (1899) and Philippine Games (1900). After Cushing's death in 1900, Culin published a revised version of American Indian Games in 1903.

In 1903 Culin resigned from the University of Pennsylvania and became curator of Ethnology at the Institute of Arts and Sciences of the Brooklyn Museum in New York. He began a series of collection expeditions to study Native Americans in the Southwest and California. Culin accumulated a large body of artifacts in the course of his career. Meticulous in their description, Culin captured "the maker, use of the object, social position of the seller, the circumstances of purchase, the provenance". He also exchanged letters with Franz Boas and George Dorsey. In 1907 Culin unified his 14 years of theories and ideas in the seminal work "Games of North American Indians", using the categories games of skill and games of chance to organize the work.

After 1907, Culin became interested in decorative art such as costume, fashion, and furniture. Working with Women's Wear magazine, he displayed contemporary fashion, changed museum rooms and created traveling exhibits to exhibit textiles and foster the study of design. As a curator at the Brooklyn Museum, Culin was instrumental in opening exhibits on the major cultures of the world. In the midst of a number of collecting expeditions to Africa, China, Japan and Europe, Culin married Alice Mumford Roberts in 1917.

In the [1920's] Culin made several collecting expeditions to Europe and published on Asian games, African games and European dress. Well known in the worlds of anthropology, ethnography and the fashion industry, Culin died in 1929.

Modern keno

Keno, in its modern form, is like a lottery or bingo in that it is a numbers game. Unlike bingo, the keno player picks the numbers for his or her ticket(s). Keno cards have 80 numbers; the keno player can pick as many (or as few) numbers as desired. This is done by circling or otherwise marking them with a pencil. Once the player has picked his numbers, he must bring his card back to the clerk at the keno booth. The clerk will then issue a receipt after recording the player's numbers.

After picking numbers and recording them at the keno booth, the player will then watch either a "big board" in which winning keno numbers will light up or on a video monitor showing the selected numbers. As the winning numbers light up, the player usually marks them on his or her card with a bright-colored marker. The amount of numbers the player originally picked that match winning numbers of a particular drawing will determine if any money is won and, if so, how much. The winning ticket needs to be taken to the keno booth immediately if it is an individual game ticket, as drawings usually take place every five minutes. If the player tries to redeem a winning ticket when the next drawing starts, it is void and no money is paid out.

Lottery versions of Keno are now used in many National Lotteries or state licensed Lotteries around the world. The games have different formulas depending on the wanted price structure and whether the game is slow (daily or weekly), or if it is a fast game with just minutes between the draws. The drawn numbers are typically published on TV for the slow games and on monitors at the point of sale for the fast games.