POKER HISTORY

Poker is a vying game from the family of card games, in which the players instead of playing their cards out, they bet on who holds the best card combination by progressively raising the stakes until either there is a showdown when the best hand wins the “pot”, either all the players but one give up betting and drop out of play, the last one wining the pot without a showdown. So, it is possible for the pot to be won not by the best hand.

The history of Poker is believed to have evolved for over 10 centuries from various games, all including the principals of ranked card or domino combinations and the use of “bluffing”.
There are different theories about where poker got started. One popular belief is that a game similar to poker was first invented by the Chinese sometime around 969 A.D., when the emperor Mu Tsung played domino cards with his wife. In Egypt were found fragments of cards dating to the 12th and 13th centuries. Even if the original Egyptian hasn’t been discovered , the fragments can be linked to the cards that were used for “Ganjifa” in the 16th century. The Ganjifa deck of 96 elaborate cards is believed to have inspired the Persian game of “As Nas”, a five player, 25 card game from the 17th century. Nas is one of the earliest games that most resembles to today’s poker, using individual rounds of betting and hand ranking.

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A French game named “Poque” and a German one called “Pochen” were very popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, both developed from the 16th century Spanish game “Primero”, game which involved three cards dealt to each player and the use of bluffing. Primero is often reffered to as “poker’s mother”, being the first confirmed version of a game related to modern poker.
The French colonials imported the game to the new world when they arrived to Canada. From the 18th century when a group of French Canadian settlers founded New Orleans , it spread from Louisiana up the Mississippi river and then through the whole country. Poker’s spread was the result of a general spread of gambling during the era.

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Joseph Crowell, an English actor affirmed that in 1829 in New Orleans , poker was played with a deck of 20 cards and four players betting on which of them had the best hand. In 1834, Jonathan Green mentioned in his writings the rules of the “Cheating game” which was played on the Mississippi riverboats. Green took an interest in the game and formally named and documented the game in his book “ A Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling”.

Soon after this spread, the 20 card game was being challenged by the 52 card English deck. The adoption of a 52 card pack was made to accommodate more players, to give more use to the recently introduced flush and to ensure that there were enough cards for the draw, which turned poker from a gamble to a game of skill.

During the American Civil War , many additions were made , including stud poker and the straight. Further developments followed, such as the joker as a wild card in 1975, lowball and split-pot poker around 1909 and community card poker games in 1925.
After the beginning of the World Series of Poker in 1970, modern tournament play became popular in American casinos. In 1987, community card poker games were introduced to California, home of the largest poker casinos.

Poker became far more popular in the 21th century due to the introduction of Online poker and hole-card camera. Carefully regulated by gaming laws, poker has become the most popular card game in the world.