The History of Poker
Originally posted on 2005/07/04
By Joel the Scribe
This week, I’d like to explore a much older question, and one that is the cause of some debate; the roots of the game of poker itself.
Poker’s Pre-History: Ancient Chinese Secret or Persian Import?
The true origin of poker’s ancient cousins is widely disputed. Some believe that the earliest form of card games invented in China around 900 AD was a variant of a Chinese domino game. There is an account in 969 AD of the Emperor Mu-tsung playing a game of ‘domino cards’ with his wife on New Years Eve.
It is also said that poker was also derived from a Persian game ‘as nas’, which was played with 5 players and a 5-suited deck of 25 cards. As nas, which dates back to the 14th century, is thought to have been taught by Persian merchants and sailors to the French settlers in New Orleans. Unfortunately, there are no recorded accounts of as nas until the 1890’s, which makes some scholars question it’s relation to modern poker.
Poker‘s Middle Ages: Poque, Pochen, Primero and Brag
The French card game Poque from the late 1600’s is the first game to use a deck which employed the modern suits of spades, diamonds, clubs and hearts. The game was played with a deck of twenty cards, ranked from 10, Jack, Queen, King to Ace. Five cards were dealt to four players. Players would simply bet until showdown, and bluffing was the key. Draws were yet to be introduced to poker, and straights and flushes were unknown to these poker pioneers. It is commonly believed that the word ‘poker’ is derived from a mispronunciation of the word ‘poque’ (pronounced poke) by non-Francophone Americans in 19th century.
Pochspiel (or Pochen – to knock, or to bet), was a German game of similar style. This five card game was played with a staking board, and was played in three rounds. In the first, a player was paid for being dealt the highest card. The second was a round of betting, and the third was won by having a hand which equalled the nearest to 31.
The French three-card games ‘brelan’ and ‘bouillote’ are other distant cousin of modern poker from the 17th century. The English had their own variation of ‘brelan’, named ‘brag’ or ‘bragg’ which incorporated (but did not invent) bluffing.
Poker also shares roots with ‘primero’, a popular 16th century game which was invented in the late 15th century. While Spain was widely considered to be the birthplace of this game etymologically, the earliest hard evidence of the game’s roots comes from Italy. At one time, Primero was the game of choice throughout Western Europe and had become one of England’s most popular card games.
A game of Primero, like home poker, could often end in a heated contest, in part because of the action, and also because the exact rules were never written down, and variants arose from house to house. The end result was that by the 18th century, there was some confusion about how the game was properly played, and the popularity of Primero had waned considerably.
Primero is similar to draw poker where players get 2 cards followed by a betting round, followed by 2 more cards followed by a betting round. Players not only bet (or vie, as called in this game), but announced the hands they chose to represent, and other players would Hold, Pass, or Fold accordingly. Certain hands would force players to make an exchange of cards, and a fold would allow you to take back half of your bet, a very civil element of a 16th century game if you ask me. Want a tip for playing Primero? Vie hard on a chorus of 7s (4 sevens was the best possible Primero hand). Don’t worry if you get re-veid by a Fluxus (a flush), you’ve got them beat. Go over the top with a re-vie, or even go all-in if your house allows….I’ll be sipping bowls of wine at the side of the impluvium if you need more advice on Primero.
For a written reconstruction on the game of Primero, click here.
Next week, we’ll continue our examination of the history of the world’s greatest card game, as we recount the development of Poker through America in the 1800’s and it’s inevitable move to the World Wide Web.
Joel the Scribe
HomePoker.com
The History of Poker, Part II
Originally posted on 2005/07/14
By Joel the Scribe
Welcome back to the conclusion of our two part series on the history of Poker. When we left off last week, we had examined the games through history that had made a contribution on the development of poker. This week, we’ll be looking at a much more modern era, and in it a much more modern game of poker. Please join me as we begin our journey to the new world with the French Settlers, endure the Civil war, and rocket into cyber-space as the History of Poker continues.
Poker in the New World
In America, the history of poker is much more easily drawn. Arriving with the French in New Orleans, the game moved by steamboat to the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. From there it was carried by the wagon trains and eventually rail to the West, where a frontiersman could soon find a poker table in every saloon in every town
There are several accounts of 20 card poker throughout the mid 1800’s. It was widely played on the floating card barges of the Mississippi. Many historians believe that the game begins to move from 20-cards to 52-cards during the 1830’s to accommodate more players at the table and to allow players to draw cards. It is in this time that the flush is considered a ranking hand in modern poker, but straights are yet to come into the picture. The first recorded account of Draw Poker is seen in 1850, but by now the game of draw poker is known to most.
Our first written account of the game of poker as we know it comes from the published memoirs of English Actor, Joseph Cowell. While travelling in the United States, on a paddle steamer en route from Louisville to New Orleans, Cowell describes a green-spectacled card-sharp hard at work to cheat a table of ‘shady-looking’ characters out of their money. On a foggy December night in 1829, the steamer ran aground with bump enough to cause all the passengers to rush to the rail to find the source of the commotion. That is, all the passengers but one, ‘green-specs’ remained shuffling and cutting his cards, setting up the table for a run of impossibly good hands, of which he expected to deal himself the most impossibly good. It’s written that 3 sets of quads were dealt around, but our lowly sharp had misdealt his hand in all the chaos. Cowell writes sympathetically about the con, as ‘green-specs’ lost a bet of over $1500 in the game. Sad but true, our first recorded account of modern poker is a mischievous one at that.
The last European influence on the game of poker is recorded in 1875, when the first Joker’s appeared as wild cards.
The civil war gave rise to many variations on the original game. Stud poker is thought to have been born from the war, originally known as ‘stud-horse’ poker. This variant was born in the mid-west and is first documented in The American Hoyle (c. 1864). As well, we see the birth of qualifiers, or Jack Pots. We know this now as Jacks or Better, where a player must have a pair of Jacks or better to open a hand. In this same work, we find the first documented ranking of the straight as a legal poker hand. The opinion of these rules at the time is well captured by David Parlett, author of the Oxford History of Card Games, in these comments by one of the earliest poker writers, R.F. Foster.
"In 1897 Foster complained that ‘the jack-pot, with its accompanying small-limit game, has completely killed bluffing - that pride and joy of the old-timer...’ Nevertheless, he adds, self-contradictorily, ‘The two great steps in the history and progress of Poker have undoubtedly been the introduction of the draw to improve the hand, and the invention of the jack-pot as a cure for cautiousness... It has come to stay."
The introduction of community poker games, such as Hold’em, does not arrive to us until 1919, where the first such variant appears as a game called 'Wild Widow’ (now considered a variant of Spit in the Ocean). High-Low Poker is believed to exist as early as 1903, but is not written of until 1926.
Believe it or not, in 1910, you couldn’t play a game of poker in Nevada; betting games were considered a felony. However, the law in California determined that draw poker was a skill game and beyond the reach of antigambling laws. The popularity of draw poker games snowballed, and soon Nevada went back on its ruling in 1931 and legalized casino gambling. Until this time, Stud poker, unlike its draw cousin, was considered to be a game of chance and was an illegal activity.
Poker in the Modern Era
Online gaming has known a much more streamlined history, the first online card room was established in 1998, a big bang from which Planet Poker was born. This room, while small by the current standards set by Party Poker and 888.com, was fortunate to be the ONLY online destination for card players for a time. Others followed suit quickly, and Paradise Poker soon eclipsed Planet Poker in 1999 and become the favourite home to online poker players. Interestingly enough, our own HomePoker.com was also first launched as Marc’s Small Stakes Poker in 1998, and has been serving the ‘live’ home player ever since.
In May of 2000, the online poker industry was rocked by its first major scandal. The Poker Spot, opened by a well known player named Dutch Boyd, found itself unable to collect the credit card deposits made by its players. Payouts were unable to be made, and the card room was forced to shut its virtual doors. Since then, the online industry has not seen another such incident.
The following year, two of online Poker’s first household names would appear in the market place. Poker Stars, and the now omnipresent Party Poker. It was Party Poker that began to garner the attention of players and non-players at large with an aggressive television advertising campaign in 2003. With ad spots running in the World Poker Tour, and their own Party Poker Million, Party Poker soon knocked off Paradise Poker as the leading online card room. Party Poker recently went public on the London stock exchange, and represents approximately 50% of the online poker market. They are not alone on the public exchange, one time juggernaut Paradise Poker was purchased by SportingBet for $297.5 million in October of 2004.
We are all familiar with Poker’s Cinderella Man, Chris Moneymaker, whose 2003 WSOP victory made every home player decide they had the gusto to become a champion as well. Through a $40 buy-in at Poker Stars, Moneymaker played his way through 839 players to a memorable finish against the stylish and charismatic pro Sammy Farha for $2.5 million greenbacks. With a ‘people’s champion’, the online poker industry flourished, and more casinos, information sites and card rooms scrambled to find room on the ever crowding stage.
Joel the Scribe
HomePoker.com
The History of the World Series of Poker
Originally posted on 2005/06/31
By Joel the Scribe
Once upon a time in Dallas, Texas a young bootlegger was learning to turn prohibition into profits. Selling illegal booze by the pint, this young man was soon to leave his mark on history. It was 1946, when Benny Binion decided he was best to leave Dallas, and quickly. In his words, it was ‘the year that my sheriff got beat in the election.’ With a record nearly as long as the arm of the law, Benny left his home and a string of offences including theft, weapons charges, bootlegging and of course, gambling, behind. So where would an entrepreneurially-minded young gambler find safe haven? Only one state in the US had legalized gambling. Nevada. Benny bought the shabby old Eldorato Casino, giving it now familiar moniker of Binion’s Horseshoe and claimed to offer ‘The World’s Highest Limit’s’. Nevada gamblers flocked to what would become a hallowed hall of Poker, and they never left.
"...[I left Dallas] the year that my sheriff got beat in the election." - Benny Binion
After a few years of running some of the best limit poker in town, a man entered Benny’s card room with the swagger and confidence of a legend. This contender was looking to find the biggest game the world could offer. A heads-up, freeze-out, no-limit contest that no-one had the stomach to accept. That is until he met Benny Binion. Provided that the Horseshoe was the venue, and that the game was held in public, Mr. Binion would find an opponent for Nick ‘the Greek’ Dandalos. Benny pitched the idea to his long-time friend Johnny Moss, who had been playing in a non-stop four-day game when he got the call. Despite never visiting Las Vegas, Moss was on the road straight away, and set right to work, following a ‘hello’ and a handshake, when he arrived at the Horseshoe in 1949.
Legends are born of mountains, as men are from molehills. In this contest, they were caste from both sides of the coin. A match, to produce a legendary winner, and thereby an equal and opposite reaction. The story goes that spectators circled the game six rows deep to catch a glimpse of the fortunes that were trading hands on each pot. In time, these spectators would try their luck in the big game, but only if they were willing to risk a small fortune to most. For $10 000, many came and went, handing their savings to Moss and the Greek. In the end after months of play going four or five days at a stretch, the Greek declared ‘Mr. Moss, I have to let you go.’, and poker’s first great and gruelling war was won in the west, by Johnny Moss, the Great Old Man of Poker. While there is no formal account of the sum of the winnings, rumour has it that Dandalos had lost over $2 million.
"Mr. Moss, I have to let you go." - Nick 'the Greek' Dandalos, 1949
Though the roots of Poker’s greatest game are born in the post-war era, it was not until 1970 that Binion decided to recapture the magic of the ’49 contest. Dubbed the ‘World Series of Poker’, it was Binion’s mission to find the man who would be deemed the world’s greatest poker player. The best of the best were brought together, and just as in the legendary pre-cursor to the formal event, Johnny Moss was again triumphant, a popular vote determined that the Great Old Man was still the greatest.
With some momentum behind it, the 1971 WSOP Champion was to be named by the man who had all the chips. Again, Johnny Moss stood atop the contenders, affirming his already deific status in the world of poker. Still, despite the local popularity of the event, the WSOP had yet to reach the hearts and minds of people at large. It was not until ’72, when poker’s greatest mouth in history secured the title that the event began to shape a true following. Thomas ‘Amarillo Slim’ Preston was a natural charmer, with guile like gossamer, and yarns that could tongue-tie and befuddle the most focused opponents. With the world title to his credit, he was a natural on the talk-show circuit of the early 70’s; his charisma would afford Binion’s baby some serious appeal from card-players and non-players alike.
In one interview, as part of the Oral History Project at the University of Nevada-Reno, Binion remarked about the growing popularity of the event. With 7 players in ’72, 13 in ’73, he hoped to have over 20 in ’74. The World Series still demanded a heft $10 000 buy-in, but more and more hopefuls began to arrive at the Horseshoe. However, to really expose the event, Binion needed to make the game more accessible to gamblers at large. In the ‘80’s Binion struck gold with the inception of satellite competitions. Lower buy-in events that could secure a player a seat with the best of the best were well received by the public, and the WSOP saw 52 players in 1982. In 1987, the WSOP hosted 2141 participants and nearly $7 million in prize money.
912 entrants in the 2004 WSOP Final Event earned their seats online
If there was any doubt that Benny Binion would leave his mark on poker before his passing in 1989, his legacy shows he’s done that and more. In the last 3 years alone, the WSOP has grown from 12 events to over 30, hosting over 7500 entrants. Prize money has skyrocketed to over $20 million in 2002. The recent wins of once-amateur online players such as Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer have only made the mainstream appeal of the WSOP exponentially more popular. Last year’s final was seen in an estimated 2.8 million households, eclipsing the ratings of other major sports, in particular the NHL The growth of the online market has made no small contribution of it’s own, lending 912 players in 2004 to the main event through satellite victories. That’s even more players than the main event had ever even seen in years prior
This heads-up contest that began in 1949 has grown into an American tradition that has seen as many years as the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Though only recently enjoying the kind of exposure that stirs the public to learn more about the roots of the game, the fairy-tale beginnings of this contest do much to inspire players from all walks of life. Despite it’s recent move from the dusty halls of the Horseshoe to the glitz of the Rio it is still the story of a young American, salt-of-the-earth, who finds his fortunes through prohibition and the aftermath of the Second World War to create a new American tradition that strikes a chord in tune with traditions of old. A frontier-style creation, cast with a rich array of characters that spring forth from the pages of time, seeming all too foreign for the modern-era. The early world series in many ways seem more fit to have been staged in Tombstone than in the glitz of the Vegas strip. It was this marriage of tradition, character and glamour that gave Benny Binion a miracle tonic to give flight and a full head of hair to a now soaring poker bird of prey.
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