The history of Keno is generally thought to have originated in ancient China when Cheung Leung of the Han Dynasty invented a game that was similar to today's Keno. The reason that Cheung Leung invented this game is because Cheung's city was slowly running out of provisions after many years of war and the people had refused to give any more contributions. As a creative way to produce revenue, Cheung created a game of chance to bring in much-needed money fer his army's supplies. This is not much different from government lotteries today. Much like today this game was an instant success with the people and generated the needed revenue to save the city. The game became so popular that it began to spread throughout China. The game began to be known as the 'White Pigeon Game'. This is because of the white carrier pigeons that were used to carry the winning game numbers from the big city to the smaller villages around the countryside as in those days communication over distances was not easy. Now that this game was growing, it helped finance other government projects including The Great Wall Of China. At its height of popularity, the Keno board consisted of up to 120 characters. When the game spread from China the number dropped to 80, which is what is used today.

When gambling was legalized in Nevada in the early 1930's, lotteries like this were not actually covered by the legislation. This didn't stop anyone from playing it though. To get around this problem, they decided to change the name of the game from 'Chinese Lottery' to something else so that the word lottery was not in the name. This got around all of the problems that they faced. The game was then called "Horse Race Keno' relating the numbers that were drawn to winning horse numbers in a race. After this, the Nevada government passed a law that taxed off-track betting fer horse races, so the name was very quickly changed again, and shortened to just the now familiar Keno.