Game

Poker

Casino and Scoring Card Games

Poker is a family of card games in which players bet on the value of their hand, combining chance, mathematical probability and psychological bluffing. Its exact origin is genuinely disputed among game historians. Candidate ancestors include the sixteenth century German bluffing game Pochen, its French derivative Poque, played in New Orleans by the early nineteenth century, and the English game Brag. A once common theory tracing poker to the Persian card game As Nas is now regarded by several modern game historians, including James McManus in Cowboys Full, as unsupported by solid evidence, a claim repeated for years without a documented chain connecting the two games. The game now recognizably called poker developed in the United States in the early nineteenth century around New Orleans and Mississippi riverboat gambling; the writer Jonathan H. Green 1834 account of Mississippi riverboat gambling is among the earliest surviving descriptions of a game recognizable as poker, though undocumented earlier play is often claimed for the 1820s.

Facts

Disputed

Origin Year

1834 1

1834 is the date of Jonathan H. Green written account describing a game recognizable as poker being played on Mississippi riverboats, one of the earliest surviving documented descriptions. Undocumented earlier play is often claimed for around 1829 in New Orleans, and the game itself draws on older European games including the German Pochen and French Poque; a once common theory tracing poker to the Persian game As Nas is now regarded by several game historians as unsupported. No single origin date commands consensus.

Governing Body

Poker has no single global governing body with universal recognition. The International Federation of Match Poker (IFMP), founded 29 April 2009 in Lausanne, Switzerland, describes itself as the global governing body for Match Poker, a scored, chance-reduced tournament variant, and won provisional membership of the International Mind Sports Association in 2010; the World Series of Poker, poker's best known international championship, is run commercially rather than by any federation. 2

Multiple bodies have claimed a governing role for poker since the 2000s (the earlier International Poker Federation founded 2002, FIDPA founded 2007, and IFMP founded 2009 among them); IFMP is the one this wave could verify directly, by reading its own Wikipedia page, so it is the one cited. No source checked this wave shows any of these bodies holding the kind of near-universal recognition FIFA or FIDE hold in their sports.

Originating Region

United States, primarily New Orleans and the Mississippi River region, with contested European antecedents 1

Game Type

Card game, betting and bluffing 1

Classification

Player Count

Two-Player 1

Sport

Game Type (category)

Card Game 1

Connections

Ancestor Of

Kuhn poker

Kuhn poker is explicitly described as a simplified poker variant; derived-from links it to the general Poker game entity.

Source Kuhn poker (Wikipedia)

Featured In

World Series of Poker

Source Cowboys Full: The Story of PokerJames McManus

Long-Form Articles

Poker's Bid to Be Recognized as a Mind Sport

Played By

Steve Sung

Source Steve Sung (Wikipedia)

Steve Zolotow

Source Steve Zolotow (Wikipedia)

Stu Ungar

Source Wikipedia, Stu Ungar

T. J. Cloutier

Source T. J. Cloutier (Wikipedia)

Ted Forrest

Source Ted Forrest (Wikipedia)

Thomas Cannuli

Source Thomas Cannuli (Wikipedia)

Titanic Thompson

Source Titanic Thompson (Wikipedia)

Todd Brunson

Source Todd Brunson (Wikipedia)

Tom McEvoy

Source Tom McEvoy (Wikipedia)

Tony Dunst

Source Tony Dunst (Wikipedia)

Tony Ma

Source Tony Ma (Wikipedia)

Vanessa Rousso

Source Vanessa Rousso (Wikipedia)

Vanessa Selbst

Source Wikipedia: Vanessa Selbst

Victor Ramdin

Source Victor Ramdin (Wikipedia)

Viktor Blom

Source Viktor Blom (Wikipedia)

Walter Browne

Source Walter Browne (Wikipedia)

Xuan Liu (poker player)

Stated in the cited article.

Source Xuan Liu (poker player) (Wikipedia)

Yevgeniy Timoshenko

Source Yevgeniy Timoshenko (Wikipedia)

Showing 201 to 218 of 218 in Played By, page 5 of 5.

In the Other Atlases

Found In

Europe

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject is found.

North America

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject is found.

Sources

1. Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker

James McManus, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009

Wikipedia, article summary lead
Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, with varying rules in different places. While the earliest known form of the game was played with just 20 cards, today it is usually played with a standard 52-card deck, although in countries where short packs are common, it may be play
Featured In: World Series of Poker
Played By: Chris Moneymaker

2. Wikipedia, International Federation of Match Poker

WikipediaHistory section

Quote, History section

IFMP was founded in Lausanne on April 29, 2009.

Ancestor Of

Featured In

Long-Form Articles

Played By

Found In

Take a Related Quiz