Notes

The Game of Draw Poker - A Brief History
In many ways, the game epitomizes the raw bone tenacity of the American spirit that drove the western movement from the Mississippi River in the 1800's. Life on the frontier was harsh, hazardous and full of risks - the pioneers were literally gambling on their lives every day. To both survive in the untamed west and to win at draw poker a guy needed to be skillful at what he did and count on lady luck to smile on him. He had to closely watch his adversaries and sometimes bluff his way to avoid it of a situation. The outcomes of his actions could prove very profitable or he could lose it all, sometimes even his life. Draw poker then was a natural choice for the men of the American west who were used to risking everything.

The game was the consequence of an evolutionary process that started when poker was initially took shape in America early in the nineteenth-century. Just when and where it had been first played is at the mercy of a continuing debate among historians, as may be the game's origins. Several postulations attribute the game's lineage to a French game called "poque" or perhaps to a German game referred to as "pochspiel." British historians declare that the game was a primary descendent of the English card game of "brag." Still other researchers declare that poker evolved from a sixteen-century Persian card game called "as nas" that has been used a twenty-five-card deck containing five suites and has rules similar to five-card stud poker. Since exact documentation of poker's early history is impossible to find out its inception will probably remain a mystery.

Poker is thought to have started in America sometime in the early 1800's, possibly in saloons of New Orleans. From there it spread up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers by way of the commercial steam boat traffic. Then as the wagon trains and railroads pushed the frontier west, poker continued to get popularity with the first adventurers. playking88 , Joseph Crowell, recorded seeing poker being played on the riverboats in his diary of 1829 and later in his 1844 book, Thirty Years Passed Among the Players in England and America. A reformed gambler by the name of Jonathan H. Green wrote about early poker in his book, Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling that has been published in 1843. Both men described an early on version of poker that has been used a twenty-card deck (A-K-Q-J-10). Each of four players was dealt five cards and bets were placed on these five original cards without discards or draws. Once the betting was on the owner of the best hand won the pot - in the region of one pair, two pair, triplets, full house (one pair and a triple), and four of a kind. Due to the limits of a twenty-card deck there is just a single round of betting before the winning hand was declared which made bluffing a more difficult maneuver.

Because the game evolved it moved to a thirty-two card deck and then eventually to the standard "French deck" of fifty-two cards. Sometime in the mid-1830's straights and flushes were introduced as winning hands. A couple of years later draw poker was created and started making the rounds of gambling halls in the west. The initial mention of draw poker appeared in the American edition of Bohn's New Handbook of Games in 1850. For the reason that same year, wild cards were introduced to poker play.
Website: https://playking88.animationblast.com/