The game of poker was developed some time during the early 19th century in the United States. Since those early beginnings, poker has grown to become an extremely popular pastime throughout the world.

19th century[edit]

Officers of the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry playing cards in front of tents. Petersburg, Virginia, August 1864

In poker, players form sets of five playing cards, called hands, according to the rules of the game. Each hand has a rank, which is compared against the ranks of other hands participating in the showdown to decide who wins the pot. Draw poker is any poker variant in which each player is dealt a complete hand before the first betting round, and then develops the hand for later rounds by replacing, or 'drawing', cards. The descriptions below assume the reader is familiar with the general game play of poker, and with hand values (both high and low variations). They also make no assumptions about what betting structure is used.

In the 1837 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle, R. F. Foster wrote: 'the game of poker, as first played in the United States, five cards to each player from a twenty-card pack, is undoubtedly the Persian game of As-Nas.' By the 1990s some gaming historians including David Parlett started to challenge the notion that poker is a direct derivative of As-Nas.^{[citation needed]} There is evidence that a game called poque, a French game similar to poker, was played around the region where poker is said to have originated. The name of the game likely descended from the Irish Poca (Pron. Pokah) ('Pocket') or even the Frenchpoque, which descended from the Germanpochen ('to brag as a bluff' lit. 'to knock'). Yet it is not clear whether the origins of poker itself lie with the games bearing those names. It is commonly regarded as sharing ancestry with the Renaissance game of primero and the French brelan. The English game brag (earlier bragg) clearly descended from brelan and incorporated bluffing (though the concept was known in other games by that time). It is quite possible that all of these earlier games influenced the development of poker as it exists now.

A modern school of thought rejects these ancestries,^[1] as they focus on the card play in poker, which is trivial and could have been derived from any number of games or made up on general cardplay principles.^[2] The unique features of poker have to do with the betting, and do not appear in any known older game.^[1] In this view poker originated much later, in the early or mid-18th century, and spread throughout the Mississippi River region by 1800. It was played in a variety of forms, with 52 cards, and included both straight poker and stud. 20 card poker was a variant for two players (it is a common English practice to reduce the deck in card games when there are fewer players).^[3] The development of poker is linked to the historical movement that also saw the invention of commercial gambling.^[4]^[5]

English actor Joseph Cowell^[6] reported that the game was played in New Orleans in 1829, with a deck of 20 cards, and four players betting on which player's hand was the most valuable. Jonathan H. Green's book, An Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling (G. B. Zieber, Philadelphia, 1843), described the spread of the game from there to the rest of the country by Mississippiriverboats, on which gambling was a common pastime. As it spread north along the Mississippi River and to the West during the gold rush, it is thought to have become a part of the frontier pioneer ethos.

Soon after this spread, the full 52-card French deck was used and the flush was introduced. The draw was added prior to 1850 (when it was first mentioned in print in a handbook of games).^[7] During the American Civil War, many additions were made including stud poker (the five-card variant), and the straight. Further American developments followed, such as the wild card (around 1875), lowball and split-pot poker (around 1900), and community card poker games (around 1925).

Early books discussing poker[edit]

Hildreth, J. (1836) Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains, Wiley & Long, New York: mentions poker
Green, Jonathan H. (1843). Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling, Philadelphia: Zieber
Cowell, Joe (1844). Thirty Years Passed Among the Players in England and America
Anners, Henry F. (1845) Hoyle’s Games: refers to Poker or Bluff, 20-deck Poker, and 20-deck Poke
Bohn, Henry George (1850) New Handbook of Games: stated the rules of poker in print for the first time
Dick, Willium B. (1866) The American card player
Trumps (1868) The Modern Pocket Hoyle New York: Dick & Fitzgerald
Steinmetz, Andrew (1870) The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims, London: Tinsley Brothers
Schenck, Robert C. (1872)Rules for Playing Poker, private circulation
Winterblossom, Henry T (1875) The Game of Draw Poker Mathematically Illustrated
Blackbridge (1875) The Complete Card Player

20th century[edit]

Poker Room at the Trump Taj Mahal, Atlantic City, New Jersey

Developments in the 1970s led to poker becoming far more popular than it was before. Casino kingston oklahoma. Modern tournament play became popular in American casinos after the World Series of Poker began, in 1970.^[8] Notable champions from these early WSOP tournaments include Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim, Bobby Baldwin, Doyle Brunson, and Puggy Pearson. Later in the 1970s, the first serious poker strategy books appeared, notably Super/System by Doyle Brunson (ISBN1-58042-081-8) and Caro's Book of Poker Tells by Mike Caro (ISBN0-89746-100-2), followed later by The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky (ISBN1-880685-00-0).

By the 1980s, poker was being depicted in popular culture as a commonplace recreational activity. For example, it was featured in at least 10 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation as a weekly event of the senior staff of the fictional ship's crew.^[9]

Two significant events in the late 1980s led to the first poker 'boom'. In 1987, California legalized the flop games of hold'em and Omaha, as well as stud. Previously only draw games were allowed. While there were more poker games in California than anywhere else before this, the number of games and the action hold'em brought both increased dramatically. Cavernous poker rooms like the Commerce Casino and the Bicycle Club began operating in the LA area.^[10] In 1988 Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA),^[11] which legalized casino games on Indian lands. Poker rooms began rapidly opening within a few short years. Limit Texas hold'em was the most widely played game by far in the west, and seven card stud was the most widely played game in the east from the late 1980s until 2003.^[12]

In the 1990s, poker and casino gambling spread across the United States, most notably to Atlantic City, New Jersey.^[13] In 1998, Planet Poker dealt the first real money online poker game. In 1999, Late Night Poker debuted on British television.^[14]

21st century[edit]

Poker's popularity experienced an unprecedented spike at the beginning of the 21st century, largely because of the introduction of online poker and hole-card cameras, which turned the game into a spectator sport. Not only could viewers now follow the action and drama of the game on television, they could also play the game in the comfort of their own home. Broadcasts of poker tournaments such as the World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour brought in huge audiences for cable and satellite TV distributors. Because of the increased coverage of poker events, poker pros became celebrities, with poker fans all over the world entering into tournaments for the chance to compete with them. Television coverage also added an important new dimension to the poker professional's game, as any given hand could now be aired later, revealing information not only to the other

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