Playing poker isn’t the same as playing online slots in Syndicate Online Casino, such as 5 Dragons Deluxe, Mega Moolah, and others. The online casino game that’s closest to poker is blackjack. Both games require you to make important decisions, which ultimately determine whether you win or not. They also involve cards during gameplay. Beyond these similarities, there’s nothing much that these two games share. In fact, poker has a relatively young history compared to blackjack. In this article, we will look at how this popular card casino game has evolved over the years, from its humble beginnings to modern-day online poker.
Early Poker Origins
The origins of poker are mixed up. Like many online casino games, there’s no definite information pointing the origin of poker to an exact date or location. Different sources show poker might have been derived from different games. Others believe the modern-day poker game originated from a popular French game called poque.
● The first poker game used a deck with 20 cards, utilizing only the Ten, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace.
● Poque found its way to the French colony of Louisiana during the 18th century. It was during this time that it took an Americanised name.
● It’s from here that poker spread to other parts of the world. However, it’s not before undergoing significant changes and transformations in the game rules and gameplay.
The Old West and Civil War Era
By the mid-19th Century, many Americans had embraced poker. The most played games at that time were draw and stud poker. The popularity of these two games was fanned by the fact that Union and Confederate soldiers were playing them during the Civil War (1861-1865). The popularity of these games was so high that 4 out of 6 soldiers played poker.
After the war and during the Westward expansion, gambling joints, and salons mushroomed along the frontier. Miners, entrepreneurs, and cowboys migrating west during the gold rush got mixed up with card games.
Perhaps one of the most popular events to have unfolded during this era happened on Aug. 2, 1876. Hickok, a notorious gunslinger, was playing the popular Five Card Stud game at the then-popular Nuttal and Mann’s Saloon. He was shot in the back and died on the spot while holding two Aces and two Eights. This is where the Dead Man’s Hand phrase came from.
The Birth of Texas Hold’em
Texas Hold’em Poker was founded in the early 1900s as an alternative version of Seven Card Stud. The introduction of community cards was something unseen before in poker. Despite being only about 100 years old, it has become the most-played version of poker worldwide.
The game’s birthplace was in Robstown, Texas, with renowned poker legend Doyle Brunson playing it wherever he went. It wasn’t until the 1960s that it reached Vegas and finally spread worldwide, thanks to the WSOP event.
World Series of Poker
The formation of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) tournament propelled this card game to greater heights. Benny Binion, a renowned Texas gangster, traded his illegal gambling operations in Dallas for legal ownership of a casino in Vegas. After he took ownership of the Horseshoe Casino in 1951, Benny introduced rules that allowed players to make massive bets when playing poker online. While he didn’t know it at that time, this feature would change the fortunes of the establishment and give birth to one of the biggest poker tournaments in the world.
In the late 1960s, an idea crossed his mind; he thought a high-stakes poker game might attract onlookers and consequently drive foot traffic to his establishment. In 1970, he brought in a handful of poker players, including Amarillo Slim Preston, Doyle Brunson, and Johnny Moss, to participate in the first-ever WSOP competition.
During the first year of WSOP, only cash game action was offered, and players were allowed to vote for their favorite player. Johnny Moss won the competition and became the first player to ever win at the World Series of Poker. One year later, Binion decided to add a Texas Hold’em competition, which Moss won again. In 1972, the buy-in for the competition was $10000, and Slim Preston won the competition.
Since then, there have been tens of WSOP events with hundreds of thousands of participants. Just recently, Espen Jorstad won the 2022 WSOP event, which has a prize tag of $10 million.
The boom of online poker
The success of modern-day poker owes plenty of thanks to the internet. Despite WSOP popularizing the game in the ’90s, it wasn’t until the 2000s, when the world was connected via the internet, that poker became a hit.
While people were playing poker worldwide, the game was not understood by many and thus limited to only a handful of players. In 1998, Planet Poker was launched and was aimed at entertaining anyone with access to the internet. In 1999, a new player entered the industry to compete with Planet Poker. Paradise Poker aimed at offering a much-improved poker experience compared to what Planet Poker offered players. As of 2023, there are more than a dozen platforms dedicated to offering players a cutting-edge online casino experience.
Streaming, Twitch, and Podcasting
The poker boom started slowing down in the late 2000s, partly because the U.S. federal government cracked down on online poker. This was after the famous Black Friday scandal that rocked the industry. By 2014, online poker was back in regulated environments, with states such as Delaware, New Jersey, and Nevada allowing casinos to offer the service online.
On a broader scale, new platforms such as Twitch and YouTube gave players from other parts of the world access to poker games. This gave rise to a new crop of online poker players, who have since become influential in the iPoker industry. Players such as Jason Somerville have built their reputation in the industry through these platforms.