As a result, poker games were associated with violence. Those gamblers did not hesitate to resort to violence if they felt they were cheated. In order to keep games semi-honest, players were armed with knives and firearms. It was difficult to find a legitimate poker game due to the lawlessness of the west. Poker was gaining in popularity, but the game attracted criminals, hustlers, card sharps, and other players of ill repute. Poker was an integral part of the lore associated with the “ wild, wild west.” Faro (a French game that is an ancestor to Baccarat) was the popular game played in gambling halls and saloons in different mining towns that peppered the American west. Poker became synonymous with expansion of the western frontier in the late 1800s. For the first time, poker was spread throughout the United States and its heavily populated areas in the Midwest and the Northeast. At the end of the war, surviving soldiers took the game back home with them. In the 1860s, the “ straight” (five sequential cards) was also added to hand rankings.ĭuring the American Civil War (1861-1865) poker was played by both rebel and federal soldiers during large stretches of downtime. The hand rankings included a “ flush” (five cards of the same suit) for the first time. An additional round of betting was added to sweeten the pots.

Five-card poker evolved into a drawing game. In the mid-1800s, a deck of playing cards expanded from 20 to 52 cards. The mid-1800s birthed the rise of the steamboat gambler. Traders and merchants traveled up and down the Mississippi and introduced poker to ports and towns along the river.

New Orleans was a major port located on the banks of Mississippi River, the largest waterway in North America, and also 100 or so miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, where it meets the Gulf of Mexico and offers access to the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean.

President Thomas Jefferson purchased the port of New Orleans and a swath of land from France because Napoleon needed cash to finance his various wars in Europe. The city was originally a French colony, but it came under Spanish rule in the late 1700s before returning to French control under Napoleon in 1801.

Poker began as a regional game in saloons in New Orleans and the Louisiana territory before it became a part of the United States of America. Brag also heavily influenced the earliest incarnations of poker, which was played with a 20-card deck. The British game Brag, itself a derivative of a popular German bluffing game, was originally brought to the Americas by colonists and merchants. The widely accepted theory is that poker was created in America in the 1800s based on a derivative of Poque, a French parlor game, imported to New Orleans from French sailors and traders.

How old is poker