I was chatting with Howdy Herz last week and he mentioned a fact that I did not know about the name "Racehorse Keno". Here's a clip from a Detroit newspaper that gives the same info. Maybe this is new to you as well.

KENO: Based on the Chinese lottery, keno was brought to the United States by Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s. It originally was played with 80 Chinese characters, which were replaced in the United States with 80 Arabic numbers.

When the game was introduced in Nevada in 1931, lotteries were illegal, but bingo was not. The adaptation of the Chinese lottery was made to resemble bingo as much as possible, with 80 numbered balls spun in a bingolike cage, and 20 numbers then drawn. At that time, each number was accompanied by the name of a racehorse, drawing a parallel with legal horse betting and giving the game the name "racehorse keno." The horses' names were eliminated in 1951, when Nevada started to tax off-track betting on horse races. No casino operator wanted any suggestion that racehorse keno also should have a tax added.

The name was shortened to "keno," but casinos continued to call individual games "races." That terminology is fading, but in some Nevada casinos, you still bet on keno "races" and buy "multirace tickets" when you want to bet the same numbers on several consecutive games.

I happened to notice when I went downstairs in Harrahs Reno that there is still one old Keno board near the Player's Club that has oriental characters rather than arabic numbers. It's not in use, though.