02.16.07
Poker Origin - A Brief History of Poker
The game of poker is a relatively new card game; the best guess about its origins runs to somewhere between 1800 and 1820. The game made its first appearance in New Orleans, a territory ceded to the United States by the French government in 1803. Somewhat predictably, poker was born somewhere in the seedy gambling saloons along the mud-banks of the Mississippi River.
The first dated reference to poker appears in the account of Dragoon Campaigns in the Rocky Mountains by John Hildreth, published in 1836; Hilderth describes a late-night game of poker in the soldiers’ barracks. Apparently the game was already very popular in the South and West of the country. It was hardly know in the Eastern United States at the time.
In 1843 and 1844, the game was also referred to in the respective words of Jonathan Green, Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling, and Joe Cowell’s Thirty Years Passed Among the Players in England and America.
By Cowell, the game, as it was evidently played in the 1840s, is described in considerable detail:
One night… close by us was a party playing poker. This was then exclusively a high-gambling Western game, founded on brag, invented, as it is said, by Henry Clay when a youth; and if so, very humanely, for either to win or lose, you are much sooner relieved of all anxiety than by the older operation. … I must endeavor to describe the game when played with twenty-five cards only and by four persons. The aces are the highest denomination: then the kings, queens, jacks and tens: the smaller cards are not used; those I have named are all dealt out, and carefully concealed from one another; old players pack them in their hands, and peep at them as if they were afraid to trust even themselves to look. The four aces, with any other card, cannot be beat. Four kings, with an ace cannot be beat because then no one can have four aces; and four queens, or jacks, or tens, with an ace, are all inferior hands to the kings when so attended. But holding the cards I have instanced seldom occurs when they are fairly dealt; and three aces for example, or three kings, with any two of the other cards, or four queens, or jacks or tens, is called a full, and with an ace, though not invincible, are considered very good bragging hands. The dealer makes the game, or value of the beginning bet and called the ante - in this instance it was a dollar - and then everybody stakes the same amount, and says, “I’m up”.’ Starting of as a 20-card game, it appears that the 52-card game we play today began to make its mark in the mid-1830s and was eventually adopted as the principle form of the game so that more people – more than the four players of 20-card poker – could join the table.
The first mention of draw poker features in the Bohn’s New Handbook of Games published in 1850. Other versions appeared along side it in the 1875 edition of The American Hoyle. This book mentions draw, stud, jack pots, and whiskey poker.
Based on the steady development of the game, it’s worth noting the history of winning hands. The 20-card game of poker featured the A-K-Q-J-10 being dealt between four players. Betting was limited to one pair, two pair, triplets, full, or four of a kind. The original top hands were four aces or four king and an ace. These two combinations were unbeatable.
The acceptance of the flush was relatively stilted and complicated. By 1864, the winning combination were one pair, two pairs, straight sequence or rotation, triplets, flush, full house, and fours, although there were still some so-called traditionalists who maintained that the sequences of cards, such as A-K-Q-J-10 or 10-9-8-7-6, should not accorded value.
The earliest versions of Texas Hold’em, the variation of poker that feature communal card, appeared a early as 1919, as wild Widow. A card was dealt face up before each player at the table was dealt their fifth card. The winning hand was the best five-card combination based on the individual hand and the turned-up communal card.
Poker has been a popular game for well over a hundred years, in one form or another, but its current popularity online is largely to do with the establishment of the World Series of Poker; the tournaments that have run since 1970 and received considerable media attention.
The bottom line since the establishment of poker tournaments is this: the game is intensely popular and is likely to remain so; a great American pastime and one that, combining luck and skill, can transform a beggar into a rich man.
Tags: Card Game History, Gambling History, Poker History