Keno is a fairly easy game to find offline if you live in Las Vegas or maybe certain parts of Australia, but it can be much harder – if not impossible – to find an offline game in the UK or elsewhere. The good news is that online Keno is available to almost everyone, and in all of the most important respects it is exactly the same as the game that you would play offline. The mechanics of making your selections will obviously differ (selecting your numbers on screen rather than marking a paper keno ticket, for example) but the basic rules, objective and procedure will be fairly indistinguishable from those on an offline game. At the same time, the unique advantage of online Keno is that you can play it at any time of the day or night, and you won’t even need to leave home to do so!
Offline Keno – A Very Brief History
Keno has its roots in China (though the Keno name itself is probably American) and some say that funds raised from the lottery-style game were used to finance the building of the Great Wall. We don’t know whether or not that particular story is true, but lottery games can generally be traced back to ancient China, so it isn’t as implausible as it may initially sound.
Whatever the case, it is widely accepted that the game was brought to the West by Chinese immigrants and became popular throughout America and Europe. The name Keno was in use as early as the 19th century, and the continued popularity of the game made it a fairly obvious one to offer in places like Vegas and Atlantic City. Today, Keno is finding a brand new 21st century audience as an online game, and its life-changing jackpots look set to tantalise players for decades to come.
