While there appears to be no clear or direct early ancestor of the game, it's probable that Poker derived its present day form from elements of many different games. The consensus of some is that because of it's standard principal, its birth is a very old one.

In 1834, Jonathan H. Green made one of the earliest written references to Poker. In his writing, Green mentions rules to what he called the "cheating game," which was then being played on Mississippi riverboats. He soon realized that his was the first such reference to the game, and since it was not mentioned in the current American Hoyle, he chose to call the game Poker.

The game he described was played with twenty cards, utilizing only the aces, kings, queens, jacks and tens. Two to four people could play, & every person was dealt five cards. By the time Green wrote about it, Poker had become the number one cheating game on the Mississippi boats, receiving even more action than Three-Card Monte. Most folks taken by Three-Card Monte thought the twenty-card Poker seemed to be a more legitimate game, & they came back time & time again. It would surely appear, therefore, that the cardsharps developed Poker.

The origin of the word Poker is also well debated. Virtually all of the dictionaries & game historians say that it comes from an eighteenth-century French game, poque. However, there are other references to pochspiel, which is a German game. In pochspiel, there is an element of bluffing, where participants would indicate whether they wanted to pass or open by rapping on the table and saying, "Ich Poche!" Some say it may even have derived come the Hindu word, pukka.

Yet another potential explanation for the word Poker is that it came from a version of an underworld slang word, "poke," a term used by pickpockets. Cardsharps who used the twenty-card cheating game to alleviate a sucker from his poke may have used that word among themselves, adding an r to make it "Poker." The thought was that if the sharps utilized the word "Poker" in front of their victims, those wise to the underworld slang would not surmise the change.

There are those who also believe that "poke" probably came from "hocus-pocus", a term widely utilized by magicians. The game of Poker later evolved to include 32 cards, and eventually the modern day deck of fifty-two, not counting the two Jokers.

The game of Poker has evolved through the years, through several backroom games to the present day casinos around the world and even in the online world. Its history is rich using famous places and characters. For example, during the Wild West period of United States history, a saloon with a Poker table could be found in just about every town from coast to coast.

Today, gambling laws carefully regulate Poker, and saloons have given way to casinos & cardrooms, but Poker is played more than any other card game in the world. It has grown into a sporting event, with competitions and tournaments all around the world. Tournaments take place almost every week of the year somewhere in the world.

If you compare the prizes of major sporting events around the world, you will find that the monetary outcome of any given event in Poker would (pardon the pun) stack up. Poker today is one of the fastest growing, but hardly recognized sporting events. The pinnacle of the Poker world, every year the World Series of Poker attracts participants from all over the world who compete for money & titles as the world's top Poker players.

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