So the game was quite a different affair to modern Poker games and the best hand - four Aces was unbeatable. There was no draw and the five scoring combinations were melds only - i.e. It was a four player game played with a 20-card pack (Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks and Tens only), so that all the cards were dealt out. The early pioneers described the game as it was then - we can call it '20 Card Poker'. Two former gamblers have described the game existing at least as early as 1829.
New Orleans is famous for its Mississippi leisure steamers and the game first appears to have become popular in the smokey saloons of those notorious boats. Poker was invented in New Orleans, part of the old French territory of what is now the USA. The second most likely theory for the creation of Poker is that it comes from the old Persian game of 'As-Nas' and inherited only the name from the French connection. A French derivative of this, 'Poque' is overwhelmingly the most likely etymological source for the term 'Poker' which appeared in the first half of the nineteenth century and so the most obvious and likely theory for the link from the old card games to the new is simply that Poker, invented in French America, was derived directly from the French game of Poque. The earliest known ancestor of Poker was a German game, called Boeckels.
Poker is without doubt the most successful and popular betting and bluffing game in existence.
