Keno Keno Keno is a lottery-like gambling game often played at modern casinos, and also offered as a game by some lotteries. Players wager by choosing numbers ranging from 1 through (usually) 80. After all players make their wagers, 20 numbers (some variants draw fewer numbers) are drawn at random, either with a ball machine similar to ones used for lotteries and bingo, or with a random number generator. Each casino sets its own series of payouts, called "paytables". The player is paid based on how many numbers were chosen (either player selection, or the terminal picking the numbers), the number
Keno 'pakapoo' was based). The Chinese played the game using sheets printed with Chinese characters, often the first 80 characters of the "Thousand Character Classic", from which the winning characters were selected. Eventually, Chinese immigrants introduced keno to the West when they sailed across the Pacific Ocean to help build the First Transcontinental Railroad in the 19th century, where the name was Westernized into boc hop bu and puck-apu. By 1866 it had already become a widely popular gambling game in Houston, Texas, under the name 'Keno'. Keno payouts are based on how many numbers the player chooses and how many