History of Poker
The fascinating history of poker seems as interesting and full of legends as the game itself.
There are lots of different theories out there, so we decided to go through them all and create a ‘one stop’ blog post to tell you everything.
Poker is the world’s most popular card game, played all over the planet by all kinds of people. The game has seen a huge boom in popularity over the past 15 years, but the game actually goes way back and seems to be a melting pot of popular features known from a range of old card games.
It’s story stretches across centuries and played a major role in iconic moments of history such as the colonization of America, the Old West, and World War 1.
As-Nas
As-NasMost historians agree that the ancient, Persian card game ‘as-nas’ seems a likely origin to poker. The game can be traced back as far as the 17th century and stems from Arabic culture.
As-nas was both the name of the game and the type of cards used to play it. The name as-nas roughly translates into something like “Aces and Mankind”, and the cards featured an ace and 4 different kinds of man. Not unlike modern playing cards.
However, the ‘mankind cards’ would often show 4 ranked levels of society such as a king, a lady, a soldier and a dancing-girl. The ace was usually something cool – like a dragon or a lion. Or both, fighting each other.
A deck of as-nas would have 4 or 5 identical cards of each suit meaning the full deck was either 20 or 25 cards.
When playing as-nas, each player was dealt five cards. With no community cards, the player would only use the cards in his hand to make combinations. The ranking of combinations was pretty similar to what we use today, but without straights and flushes.
The dealer would be the first to place a stake and you would then go around the table in a circle with players either calling, raising or folding. Sound familiar? When all players’ stake was even and no one wanted to raise further, the players would show their cards and a winner was found.
What’s also really interesting about as-nas, is that the game would encourage bluffing.
As-nas certainly seems to be a very likely ancestor to poker. It introduced elements like betting, bluffing and even the early stages of the same hand rank we use today.
There’s also no denying that the game had a huge involvement in shaping the deck of cards we use today, with its introduction of aces and face cards.
But later card games would come to further develop the game towards the poker we play today.
The European Ancestors
Like much of the American population, poker also seems to have clear roots in Europe.
Some time during the 17th century, a card game called ‘primero’ became wildly popular in Spain. The game had three cards dealt to all players and a big focus on bluffing.
Later, primero was copied by the Germans who named their version ‘pochen’ and the french who called it ‘poque’.
As if that wasn’t enough, the Irish also had a version called ‘poca’ and the brits developed a version called ‘brag’. Confused yet?
Anyway, the french version (poque) was by far the most played and in the 17th century the French colonists brought it to their settlements in North America.
Early History of Poker in America
After being brought to North America, poque was translated into English and quickly developed into different versions. Around this time is when stud poker was introduced – a version of poker that is of course still played today, although less popular than Texas Hold’em and Omaha.
This version of poker became popular among the crews of riverboats transporting goods up and down the Mississippi River and thus quickly spread around the country. In fact, this is believed to be where the poker term ‘river card’ (fifth community card) derives from. As poker became popular during Mississippi boat rides, sometimes cheaters would purposely deal a final community card that would improve their own hand. If such cheating was discovered, the guy would be thrown overboard and so the river card got its name.
Early versions of casinos called ‘gambling houses’ started popping up along the riverbanks and these attracted a lot of opportunistic people, trying to hit the jackpot. This same group of people was later attracted to the possibilities of prospecting and the gold rush – and so poker spread to the West. It became tremendously popular in Westers Saloons, and is perhaps one of the most recognized elements of the Old West today. Their game of choice mostly resembles stud poker and was the backdrop of many Western stories and legends. Although a great pastime, one can easily imagine how the alcohol, guns and laws of that time would often result in very dramatic poker games.
Soldiers spreading poker
When the civil war broke out in April of 1861, many men were called to arms. As both sides gathered in their respective camps a lot of them brought poker from the West and this quickly became a popular pastime between fights. Since it was played by both sides, pretty much every soldier was introduced to the game and it’s rules at this time and it seems the game stuck with them after the war. Upon returning to their families, the soldiers further spread the game and poker, that up until now was only played by men and outlaws, was now enjoyed by everyone.
Soldiers at war also seem to be what brought the game of poker back to Europe after maturing across the pond. Although the US tried to remain neutral for the start of WW1, certain events and threats forced them to enter the war in 1917. On a faithful morning in June of 1917, American soldiers sat foot in Europe, ready for war. As during the civil war, poker became a great way to socialize between battles, and quickly caught on among the US allies who kept playing it long after the last shot of WW1 was fired.
History of Texas Hold’em
Just as one would expect, the exact origin of Texas Hold’em is the object of much debate and myths. According to official documents by Texas Legislature, the official birthplace of Texas Hold’em is the small town of Robstown, located in the state of (you’ve guessed it) Texas. This was sometime in the 1920’s.
It was the first of it’s kind to use community cards, and therefore the first to distinguish between cards on the board and the cards you hold. This is probably why they doubted the game ‘Hold’em’.
Although never officially confirmed, poker legend has it that this fast paced and pretty different take on poker was invented by notorious road gambler Blondie Forbes. A man who was later inducted in the Poker Hall of Fame for the creation.
This new type of poker quickly became popular around Texas, but never really left the state. Not until several decades later, in the 1960’s, when the entrepreneurial texan Crandell Addington saw a business opportunity and took the game to Vegas.
Things didn’t go too smooth for Addington though, as the only casino who took the bid was ‘The Golden Nugget’. The Golden Nugget was located in downtown Las Vegas, and not on the prestigious and buzzing ‘Strip’. And as if that wasn’t enough, it’s poker room was run down and very basic, with sawdust covering the floor. Not an ideal place for Addington to have his game played by any of the big players – and something had to be done.
Addington finally got his big break in 1969 when the now-demolished Dunes Casino, located on the Las Vegas Strip, agreed to host a Texas Hold’em tournament which caught the attention of the big players. And the attention of Benny Binion, a huge influencer of the Las Vegas we’ve come to know. Binion had lost his gaming license, and was looking for a chance to bounce back to the top of the Las Vegas gaming community. He and his son Jack started “The World Series Of Poker” and made Hold’em (now known as Texas Hold’em due to its roots) the centerpiece of the entire thing.
WSOP took off like a rocket and this helped solidify Texas Hold’em as the most popular type of poker in front of Five-Card Draw and Seven-Card Stud. And when Texas Hold’em was legalized in California in 1980 the game saw a massive boom.
Years later, WSOP became a household name when Chris Moneymaker (a complete amateur) beat all the pros and went on to take home the grand prize of a whopping $2,500,000. A truly amazing story we’ve detailed in this post.
Today the word “poker” is largely synonymous with Texas Hold’em – so much so that pop culture often get’s it’s timeline wrong. Like in the popular video game “Red Dead Redemption” where players are free to roam around the small towns of the Old West. The game allows users to enter saloons and play poker – but the game you’ll be playing is Texas Hold’em – even though this style of poker was in no way popular (or even invented) at that time. You gotta give the people what they want, right?
Make your mark on the
History of Poker
Now that you’re educated on the fascinting history of poker you of course need to casually share it with your friends – perhaps over a game of poker?
If so consider downloading the free EasyPoker app – a digital version of a physical poker set that provide you and your friends with an endless amount of chips and cards – for free.
The app is available for both Android & iPhone and so easy to navigate that even good old Blondie Forbes would be able to pick it up and get a game going in no time.
The app takes care of everything, so all you guys have to do is just play your cards and have fun.
And who knows, maybe we’ll have to add a segment about you in the history of poker.
History of poker
Here at EasyPoker we’re always eager to hear from our community. If you have something to add to this story, or a specific element of the history of poker you’d like us to touch on, please let us know in the comments below.
Thank you, and have a great day.
You will need (of cause) a full poker set with playing cards and poker chips (or the 
