Thousand Character Classic
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 US 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".