A Short History Lesson on Keno
If you've got nothing to do right now, how about spending a few minutes discovering the history of a popular online game - namely, keno? Come on, we promise it's going to be fun and interesting!
If you don't know what the game of keno is, it's actually like a variant of lottery - only this time, you get to pick up to 15 or 20 numbers from the digits 1 to 80. There are also different types of tickets used in the game, making it similar to bingo in that aspect.
It Started in China
That's right. Many people are unaware that a lot of things we enjoy today have their roots in China. The story of Cinderella, for instance, is actually from China - although the Grimm brothers may not admit to that. And Cinderella's slippers were truly made of sable, not glass.
But we digress. Keno's birthplace is in a little village in China during the Han dynasty. Back then the village was involved in a ferocious war that was slowly bleeding everyone's coffers until finally the peasants refused to extend any further help to financing the war.
This naturally placed the head of the army, General cheung leung, in a great quandary. Without money, there would be no way that his army could continue fighting.
Now, although nobody knows what led the Cheung Leung to devising a brilliant solution later on, it is a fact that he indeed came up with a terrific idea that was more than amenable to both the peasents and his fighting forces.
General Cheung Leung concocted a guessing game that became an overnight success. The game made use of the first eighty (some say it was really a hundred and twenty) characters or Chinese symbols of a popular poem called The Thousand Classic.
The success of the game can be imputed to the fairness of outcome and the excellently designed payout system.
If a peasant, for example, lost one subdivision (made up of 8 characters), he would only have to pay the army 3 li. When he wins one whole subdivision, on the other hand, he gets to win ten taels! Because they were risking only little for a greater sum, none of the peasants had any problems playing the game and in fact rushed to do so.
Quickly the game became so successful that it not only enabled the army to win the war but also allowed the country to finance the building and creation of the Great Wall of China all the while filling the kingdom's coffers with gold!
All in all, it's nice to see once in a while, something as simple as a game could actually save the fate of an entire nation.
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