Poch

Poch is an early card game widely regarded as one of the direct forerunners of poker, which itself developed in the United States during the nineteenth century. A round of Poch combines three distinct phases of play: melding sets of cards, vying over bets in a manner resembling later poker, and shedding cards from hand to finish. The game is normally played by three to eight people using a pack of thirty-two or fifty-two cards depending on the local version. Poch originated in German-speaking lands, with the earliest documented reference appearing in a 1441 ordinance from Strasbourg, where it was already being restricted under the Low German names Puchen or Puchspill, and a related game called boeckels appears in fifteenth-century Strasbourg records, usually in the context of being banned outright. By the sixteenth century the game had grown prominent enough to be depicted in satirical artwork involving Emperor Charles the Fifth. Documentation of the game thins between roughly 1620 and 1710 before it re-emerges in the early eighteenth century, by which time related games called Glic and Nain Jaune had appeared in France and Pope Joan had appeared in England. The boards used for play evolved over this period from simple rectangles to octagons and eventually to circular designs with an increasing number of compartments.