Editing Keno (section)

==History==
{{see also|Pakapoo}}
The word "keno" has [[French language|French]] or [[Latin]] roots (Fr. ''quine'' "five winning numbers", L. ''quini'' "five each"), but by all accounts the game originated in China. Legend has it that [[Zhang Liang (Western Han)|Zhang Liang]] invented the game during the [[Chu-Han Contention]] to raise money to defend an ancient city, and its widespread popularity later helped raise funds to build the [[Great Wall of China]]. In modern China, the idea of using [[lottery|lotteries]] to fund a public institution was not accepted before the late 19th century.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kenoonline.org/history/ |title=Keno History |website=kenoonline.org |publisher= |access-date= 9 June 2015}}</ref>

Chinese lottery is not documented before 1847, when the Portuguese government of [[Macau|Macao]] decided to grant a licence to lottery operators. According to some, results of keno games in great cities were sent to outlying villages and hamlets by [[carrier pigeon]]s, resulting in its Chinese name 白鸽票 ''báigē piào'', with the literal reading "white dove tickets" in Mandarin, but in Southern varieties of Chinese spoken in [[Guangdong]] simply meaning "pigeon tickets",<ref>{{cite web|url=https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%99%BD%E9%B4%BF#Chinese|title=白鴿|website=Wiktionary|access-date=2022-08-22}}</ref> and pronounced ''baak<sup>6</sup>-gaap<sup>3</sup>-piu<sup>3</sup>'' in [[Cantonese]] (on which the Western spelling 'pak-ah-pu' / '[[pakapoo]]' was based).

[[File:Pakapoo ticket.png|thumb|1876 Australian illustration of a ''pakapoo'' ticket]]
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.<ref name="ccc">Melanie Yap, Dianne Leong Man. ''Colour, confusion and concessions'', pp.240-241.</ref><ref name="nyt">{{cite news| url=http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9D0DE1DC173AE033A25756C0A9649C94699FD7CF | work=The New York Times | title=Chinese Gambling Games; Mysteries Of Fan Tan And Boc Hop Bu. Two Popular Games In The Chinese Quarters Of American Cities-- Superstitions Of The Players. Boc Hop Bu. Superstitions | date=5 February 1888}}</ref> Eventually, Chinese immigrants introduced keno to the West when they sailed across the Pacific Ocean to work on construction of the [[First transcontinental railroad]] in the 19th century,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.bigwinscasino.com/rules/keno.html |title=Keno History |access-date=10 April 2007 |archive-date=29 July 2012 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120729102600/http://www.bigwinscasino.com/rules/keno.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> where the name was Westernized into ''boc hop bu''<ref name="nyt"/> and ''puck-apu''.<ref name="ccc"/> There were also other, earlier games called Keno, but these were played in the same way as the game now known as "[[Bingo (British version)|Bingo]]", not the modern game of Keno.{{cn|date=May 2024}}