When we talk about gambling or casino games, poker, including Texas Holdem, its popular variant, is the first name that comes to mind.

History and interesting facts about Poker

Indeed, since its conquest of the United States in the 17th Century, the number of its followers has continued to increase exponentially. However, many do not yet know his story and the best anecdotes about him. Discover them below.

A vague origin

For some, the mention of the name is enough to project themselves into scenes from western films set in the famous saloons. For them therefore, the United States should be the country of origin of poker. However, this is an erroneous point of view, knowing that in many regions of the world, traces of what appears to be an ancestor of the famous card game have been discovered.

Let us mention in particular As Nas, a game which made the Persians proud in the 16th Century and which gave, for the first time, room for bluff. There is also the European game Primero, already also renowned at the time and which would have attributed to poker its betting system and its hands (three of a kind, pairs, three cards of the same suit).

Appearance of new variants

At the beginning of its American conquest, poker was played with 20 cards. These include one card of each kind, varying between the 10 and the Ace, which seems to suggest an affiliation with the Ace Nas. It was not until the 1840s and the adoption of the 52-card deck that suits and suits appeared. The most popular variant currently and which constitutes the main attraction of the World Series of Poker, Texas Holdem, only emerged in the early 1900s. Remember that the game is played most of the time in no limit . For its part, Omaha saw the light of day during the 1980s, decades of the appearance of bidding limits.

For two decades now, poker has been accessible online thanks to the advent of casinos and other specialized online gambling sites. Furthermore, to reproduce atmospheres similar to those of a physical games room, there are Live versions.

The best anecdotes about Poker

The person who made the most money playing poker is Justin Bonomo, whose cumulative winnings are $49 million. However, she is not the one who occupies the top of the lists of players who have amassed the most money in a single tournament. This title goes to Antonio Esfandiari who was able to win $18.3 million in the Big One For One Drop tournament of the World Series of Poker. The two, along with their contemporaries, will still have difficulty breaking the record for the longest poker game which is 8 years, 5 months and 3 days at the Bird Cage Theater in Tombstone, Arizona.