Who invented poker?

Who invented poker? It’s a question that continues to fascinate. The game’s glitzy, modern-day image is largely attributed to American popular culture, from the gaming floors of The Strip to Hollywood blockbusters where card savants play high-stakes games of life and death. Yet, the origins of poker remain somewhat elusive.

You might accept that the United States created poker, adapting it from the French game of poque. Or, you could dig a little deeper and uncover more layers of the game’s history. Whichever approach you take, there’s no single answer to "who created poker," which only adds to its mystique as a fascinating invention.

Where did poker originate?

There is no single person credited with the invention of poker, but records about its origins can be garnered. The game evolved out of word of mouth and tradition, where people derived and hammered out the rules over what could be hundreds of years. In other words, the inventor of poker will never be known.

However, there are specific sources, too. Poker has been influenced by the French and Spanish, and some sources pinpoint the origin of the game to China and the Arabic world.

For example, Robert Frederick Foster says in his Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of Indoor Games, that "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."

In other words, poker could date back to 550 BC, in some very limited form. A more modern influence, however, comes from the French game of "poque," pronounced / p o k / which first appeared in Strasbourg, and was similarly influenced by a German predecessor, "pochen."

If you want to be even more fastidious about the historical context, then you would be pleased to find out that the German game itself originated from the Spanish „primero."

Now, if we are talking about "poker" the way we know it today, this is definitely something we should credit the United States with, as all recorded evidence suggests that it was the local settlers and then the American nation that embraced poker in a way that no other nation has.

The origins of poker in the United States

The first written account of the game of poker comes from the United States, where settlers were playing the game as early as the 1800s along the Mississippi, exploring both straight poker and stud poker. The game was always played with 52 cards, although other variants existed, such as a version with 20 cards.

The historic accounts of poker are recorded history, with English actor Joseph Cowell writing that the game was played as early as 1829 in New Orleans.

Gambling was a common pastime along the Mississippi River, enough to be fictionalized and also part of the written account of the day, with Jonathan H. Green publishing a book called "An Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling," which talked about the proliferation of poker, and gambling in general.

Stud poker specifically arrived during the American Civil War, as new versions of the game continued to mushroom. Poker was not yet at the time the homogenous game that it is today, with many variations amended to suit regional preferences better, including straight poker, wild card, lowball and split-pot poker.

Many of these versions have retained their potency and popularity from over 200 years ago and made it well into the 21st century, but not all, understandably, are as popular. Moving past poker’s historic roots, the game’s true vault to salience arrived in the 20th century and specifically, the period from the 1970s onward.

Who invented poker Texas Hold’em?

"Texas Hold’em was invented much like all other versions of the game were. The game was designed to suit the preferences of local players. As its name suggests, this particular version originated in Texas, but even though the game dates back to the 1900s, there cannot be a single person credited with its invention.

It was just something that happened. Some group of people must have devised the modern-day rule set of the game, and it was so rapidly adopted, that nobody had time to lay claim to inventing the version themselves. However, much was going to happen later in the century, shaping the future of the game.

As mentioned just before, poker really started to pick up in the 1970s, and it was thanks to the ingenuity and passion for the game of Benny Binion, and his Horseshoe Casino which hosted the first World Series of Poker in 1970. The prize pool was $30,000 and the event only attracted seven participants.

After all, who would like to be associated with poker as their career? Regardless, this was a pivotal event, and if you are wondering who invented poker the way we know it today – with the glitzy multi-million-dollar events and thousands of participants, you could probably credit Benny Binion.

Poker would continue to grow in popularity, with the event hosted out of the Horseshoe Casino until 2005. In the first 11 editions of the event, the prize pool grew to $680,000 in 1980, and there were surprisingly only 73 participants in the event. Binion himself passed away in 1989, playing a crucial role in popularizing poker.

Poker’s history and origins in a nutshell

As you can see, pinpointing poker’s history isn’t too difficult, but crediting a single person with the game’s invention is difficult. There is someone or a group of people who most certainly invented Texas Hold’em, but we are unlikely to ever find out who they were.

It’s just that poker proved to be such a fantastic game that its popularity spread too fast at a time when pastime was not monetized, and so it became that poker took over America.

Even before Texas Hold'em, finding a written account of a person who might have invented one version of poker or another is hard - next to impossible.

Today, you may not know who created poker, or where the game originated, but we can agree that the game has become a staple of American culture for better or for worse.

Image credit:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As-Nas#/media/File:%DA%AF%D9%86%D8%AC%D9%81%D9%87.jpg
2. Unsplash.com
3. https://special.library.unlv.edu/taxonomy/term/2098