One of the most popular card games in the world is poker. The game was played in the Old West among cowboys, by dogs on velvet paintings, and by the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Poker is played informally among friends and family, yet it's also a high-stakes competitive game where millions of dollars can be won or lost. It's a game that has origins that go back centuries, but its current manifestation is very modern.
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Poker, one of the most popular card games in the world, has a rich and complex history that spans centuries and continents. While its exact origins are debated, poker has evolved significantly over time, influenced by various card games from Europe Asia and the Americas. For those of you who might, for whatever reason, not know what poker is, poker is a strategic card game that combines skill, psychology, and luck, where players compete to form the best hand.
or bluff opponents into folding. It's typically played with a 52-card deck and involves betting rounds where players place wagers based on the strength of their hands. The game has many different variants, including Texas Hold'em, 5-card draw, and 7-card stud, each with its own unique rules.
Players use a combination of private and community cards, depending on the variant being played, to create the best five card hand. If you were to distill what poker is across all of its variants, I would say that it involves two major elements. making the best five-card hand, and the ability to bluff. Poker's roots can be traced back to several older card games originating in Europe and the Middle East.
Perhaps the oldest game that we can trace back to that could be considered an ancestor of poker is the Persian game Aznas. Asnas is a traditional Persian card game from the 16th and 17th centuries, played with a deck of 20 or 25 cards featuring unique designs like lions, suns, and other symbols instead of the standard suits.
as NAS involves elements of bluffing and betting as well. Each player is dealt five cards and they wager based on the strength of their hand, with rounds of betting similar to modern poker. Players can raise, call, or fold, and the objective is to win the pot by having the highest-ranking hand or bluffing opponents into folding.
While as Nass has some glaringly obvious similarities to poker, it isn't known exactly how the game moved westward. The game which is a closer relative of poker was the French game Poké. Poké was a popular French card game in the 17th and 18th centuries. Played originally with a 32-card deck, Poké involved betting, bluffing, and hand rankings, much like today's poker.
Players were dealt a set number of cards and took turns betting on who had the best hand, with the option to raise, call, or fold, key mechanics that later influenced poker's structure. Bluffing was an essential part of the game as players could mislead opponents about the strength of their hands. There was also a similar German game called Pochen.
French settlers introduced Poké to Louisiana, which evolved into a five-card game played with 20-card decks. Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks, and Tens. What we know of the game and its spread largely comes from written accounts of travelers to the region. The English actor and author Joseph Colwell reported the 20-card version of the game being played in New Orleans as of 1829.
The game quickly spread through gambling saloons in New Orleans and onto the Mississippi River steamboats, where riverboat crews would play the game. The river served as a conduit for spreading the game up and down the river to the various communities along its banks. And it was here that the French poquet was Americanized into the word poker. By the 1830s and 1840s, the 52-card deck became standard, allowing for more complex hands and bedding structures.
The 52 card deck allowed for the poker hands that we know today. There are basically nine types of poker hands. The value of the hand is dependent upon the odds of getting it, with the lowest probability hands having the highest value. In order from lowest to highest, the type of hands are... High card. If no player has a pair or better, the highest single card wins. The next would be one pair, which is two cards of any type. The next is two pair, which is two sets of pairs.
Then there's three of a kind, which is three cards of the same type. After that is a straight, which is five consecutive cards of any suits. Aces can be high or low in a straight. Then there's a flush, which is five cards of the same suit, but not necessarily in sequence. Then there's a full house, which is a combination of three of a kind and a pair. And then four of a kind, which is four cards of the same type. And the highest type of hand...
is a straight flush, which is five consecutive cards that are all of the same suit. The best possible hand is a royal flush, which is just a straight flush with an ace high. It's interesting to note that in the first half of the 19th century, the Mississippi River was considered to be the backwater of the United States. And this makes poker one of the first cultural things to develop in this part of the country.
As people moved west, they were often introduced to the game along the Mississippi and took it with them. Sometime, probably in the 1840s, the draw was introduced to the game. The draw simply meant that you could replace your cards after they were dealt and a round of betting. The next big event that spread the game was the U.S. Civil War. Soldiers had lots of free time in their hands and would often play cards in camp to keep themselves entertained.
One of the variants that developed during the war was five-card stud. In five-card stud, each player is dealt a card face down, followed by a card face up. After a round of betting, another card is dealt face up. This continues until five cards are dealt to each player, four of which are face up and one's face down. After the war, poker became a staple in the frontier saloons across the Wild West.
Poker then finally found itself in the book The Complete Hoyle, which served as the definitive rulebook for many different card games. Another variant that arose during the post-war period was Seven Card Stud. Seven card stud is just like five card stud, except that each player is given two cards down, four cards up, and then one more card down. It wasn't until the early 1900s that the most popular variant of poker was developed.
Texas Hold'em The origin of Texas Hold'em is claimed to have originated in Robstown, Texas, where it was first played before spreading across the state. Unlike traditional poker games that relied solely on a player's private cards, Texas Hold'em introduced the idea of community cards, adding more strategy and depth to the game.
In Texas Hold'em, players receive two private cards each, known as whole cards, and use five shared community cards to make the best five-card hand. The game has four betting rounds. The first is the pre-flop when the players receive their whole cards and then place bets. The second round is the flop when three community cards are dealt face-up.
The third round is the turn, when a fourth community card is revealed, and the final round happens after the river, which is the fifth and final community card that is dealt. Players can check, bet, call, raise, or fold during each round. When all the betting is completed, whoever has the best five-card hand wins. Texas Hold'em remained a regional game until the 1960s, when Texas gamblers like Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim, and Crandall Addington brought it to Las Vegas.
It was introduced at the Golden Nugget Casino in 1963, and by 1967 it was being played at the Dunes Casino, where it attracted high stakes players. Texas Hold'em gained national recognition in 1970 when Benny Binion made Texas Hold'em the feature event at the first World Series of Poker. The World Series of Poker revolutionized poker by transforming it from a niche gambling pastime into a globally recognized competitive sport.
The World Series of Poker introduced the concept of a structured poker tournament, bringing together the best players to compete for the title of world champion. The event gave poker a main stage, attracting media attention and inspiring new players. In 1973, CBS Sports aired a World Series of Poker event, making it the first ever televised poker tournament. Starting in 1976, the World Series of Poker began awarding a bracelet to the winners of their various events.
A bracelet is the most prestigious non-monetary award that can be earned in a world of competitive poker. Doyle Brunson's Super System, a book detailing poker strategy, was released in 1979 and helped establish the World Series of Poker as the ultimate proving ground. Stu Unger, one of the most talented poker players ever, won back-to-back World Series of Poker main events in 1980 and 1981.
The 1991 World Series of Poker main event saw a record first place prize of $1 million, and ESPN began broadcasting World Series of Poker events in the 1990s, increasing public interest. However, it wasn't until the early 2000s that the popularity of poker really took off. It was a combination of several events that all took place around the same time, which caused its popularity to explode.
The first was the rise of online poker. This allowed people to play competitively for money from the comfort of their own homes without having to visit a casino or find a game. Not only did this spread the game but it allowed more players to quickly increase their skills by playing more hands more quickly than ever. The second was the creation of the World Poker Tour in 2002.
Instead of a once-a-year event, the WPT had a series of tournaments around the world that were all televised, allowing for poker to develop a following even if you didn't play. This was the dumbest thing that I had ever heard of, which goes to show just how much I know. Online poker and the WPT were the tinder for the spark that ignited it in 2003. That spark was an amateur player named...
Chris Moneymaker, who won the World Series of Poker main event after qualifying through an online tournament. He paid only a $39 entry fee, which he then turned into $2.5 million for his win. Moneymaker proved that anyone, even an online player with no live tournament experience, could become a world champion.
His win inspired millions to take up poker, leading to a surge in online poker participation, record-breaking World Series of poker fields, and increased media coverage. This became known as the Moneymaker Effect. The number of World Series of Poker entrants in the main event in 2003, the year that Moneymaker won, was only 839. By 2006, it had exploded to 8,773.
In 2024, there were over 10,000. Since the 2000s, competitive poker has expanded internationally, fueled by the rise of online poker, television tournaments, and major global events. The World Series of Poker launched World Series of Poker Europe in 2007 and later World Series of Poker Asia Pacific in 2013, bringing these prestigious tournament series beyond Las Vegas.
The World Poker Tour also expanded, holding events across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, making poker a truly global sport. The rise of poker hasn't been without some setbacks, however. On April 15, 2011, the U.S. Justice Department shut down major online poker sites, severely impacting the industry. This event became known as Black Friday.
Since then, online poker has been slowly re-legalized in certain states and is only available in some countries. Poker has seen a tremendous amount of growth and change over the last 200 years. It's gone from an obscure French game played by riverboat crews on the Mississippi, to dusty saloons in the Old West, to glitzy Las Vegas casinos, to becoming a worldwide internet and television phenomenon.
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