Without a doubt, poker stands as one of the most popular and worldwide known card games. Poker is not hard to learn although once the initial rules are learned, there is a high degree of skill unlike in online pokies, it cannot be said that poker is a luck-based game, maybe only partially. Continue reading to catch up on some of the most intriguing poker facts.
The Origin and Evolution of Poker
Poker was created in the Louisiana area, with New Orleans, the birthplace of Jazz and cocktails being the birthplace of poker too. Still, even though Poker was developed in the US, it is firmly believed that it evolved from a combination of ranked cards and dominoes. In 969 A.D., the Emperor Mu-Tsung played domino cards with his wife and a giant part of that game was bluffing which corresponds to poker too.
Poker Used to be Stingy
Nowadays, we all know and play 52 cards poker but in the beginning, the game of poker involved four players and twenty cards. Each of the players got five cards and the betting would start to guess who has the best hand. According to history, the game as we know it nowadays, with a deck of 52 cards started from 1834.
The Evolution of Poker Chips
In its first years, poker was played for anything that players had, from gold coins to chickens and it was imperative for saloons to come up with standardization to solve this issue. The solution was poker chips made of bone, clay, wood, and ivory. The chips were exchanged for cash at the saloon just like nowadays.
The Longest Game of Poker
The longest recorded game of poker took place in Arizona’s Bird Cage Theatre. It began in 1881 and lasted for eight and a half years. The minimum buy-in was $1000 which was a lot at that moment and pretty much all of the players were Wild West types of characters. It would be interesting to see a movie on that topic.
The most Lucrative Sport
Yes, tennis players, football players, NBA players and many more, they don’t match up to the top five awards in super high roller poker tournaments. These five prizes total to almost $45 billion which puts poker as the most lucrative sport in the world.
For the end, there are over 300 million combinations of seven-card poker hands. Yes, that much and this is one of the reasons why poker remains as a classic and one of the most popular card games in the world. It will be interesting to see the future evolution of poker.