The history of poker
By All In Central · Updated
Poker was born in the early-19th-century United States, most likely around New Orleans. Two hundred years later it is played by millions, with World Series Main Events drawing ten thousand players. This is how it got there — with the legends that don't stand up marked as contested.
Origins
A bluffing game from the lower Mississippi, and how its rules took shape.
c. 1800–1830
Where poker came fromContested
Poker grew up in the early-19th-century United States, most likely around New Orleans and the lower Mississippi. The French game poque, the German pochen ("to brag, to bluff") and the English game brag are its likeliest ancestors. The once-popular claim that it descends from the Persian game As-Nas has been challenged by modern gaming historians, who note that As-Nas is only documented much later.
1829
The earliest described game
The English actor Joseph Cowell described poker being played in New Orleans in 1829: four players, five cards each from a 20-card deck (A-K-Q-J-10), betting on the best hand with no draw. He published the account in his 1844 memoir.
1830s
"Poker" appears in printContested
The word is first recorded for the card game in the 1830s — dictionaries differ on the exact year, from 1834 to 1836. James Hildreth's 1836 Dragoon Campaigns to the Rocky Mountains, where an officer "lost some cool hundreds last night at poker," is the most-cited early reference.
1830s–1850s
The 52-card deck and the flush
The full 52-card deck came into poker in the 1830s and took about two decades to win out. More cards meant more players, and the flush joined the hand rankings.
1843
Jonathan H. Green exposes "the cheating game"
A reformed gambler who had worked the Mississippi riverboats, Green published An Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling — the first substantial American book on poker, and on the card sharps who worked it.
1850
Draw poker in the rulebooks
Bohn's New Hand-Book of Games (1850) is one of the first printed descriptions of poker with a draw. Draw poker became the standard game.
1861–1865
The Civil War spreads the game
Soldiers on both sides played poker, carrying it across the country. The 1864 American Hoyle has the first recorded description of stud poker, and the straight joined the rankings around the same time.
The Wild West to Las Vegas
Saloons, card clubs and road gamblers — and the move to legal casinos.
1876
Wild Bill Hickok's "dead man's hand"Contested
On August 2, 1876, Jack McCall shot Wild Bill Hickok in the back while he played poker in a Deadwood saloon. Legend says he held black aces and eights — the "dead man's hand" — but no record from the time lists his cards.
1885
California bans stud — but not draw
An 1885 amendment to California's penal code banned "stud-horse poker" but left draw poker, seen as a game of skill, legal. Card clubs grew out of the gap; Gardena became Southern California's poker capital from the 1930s.
Early 1900s
Texas hold'em's birthplace: Robstown, TexasContested
Local tradition says the first hand of Texas hold'em was dealt in Robstown in the early 1900s. No record from the time confirms it, and the game's real origin is unknown.
1931
Nevada legalises gambling
On March 19, 1931, Governor Fred Balzar signed the bill that legalised wide-open gambling in Nevada, setting up Las Vegas and Reno as the home of public poker in the US.
1949
Johnny Moss vs. Nick "the Greek" DandolosContested
Poker's most famous legend: a months-long heads-up marathon arranged by Benny Binion, ending with Dandolos saying "Mr. Moss, I have to let you go." Historians doubt the usual telling — the Horseshoe didn't open until 1951 — though Jack Binion later said a private match did happen.
1960s
Hold'em reaches Las Vegas
Texas road gamblers brought no-limit hold'em to Las Vegas: Felton "Corky" McCorquodale is credited with introducing it at the California Club around 1963, and by 1967 Crandell Addington, Doyle Brunson and others were playing it at the Golden Nugget.
1969
The Texas Gamblers Reunion
Tom Moore invited the top players to his Holiday Hotel in Reno for a high-stakes gathering. Benny Binion was there, and wanted to build something bigger.
The World Series
A Reno reunion of Texas gamblers becomes Benny Binion's championship.
1970
The first World Series of Poker
Binion hosted the first WSOP at his Horseshoe casino in downtown Las Vegas. It was a series of cash games among seven players, who voted Johnny Moss the world champion; his prize was a silver cup.
1971–1972
The Main Event becomes a tournament
In 1971 the championship became a freezeout tournament, won by Moss again. Amarillo Slim won in 1972 and took the World Series onto national television talk shows.
1976
The first gold bracelets
The WSOP began awarding gold bracelets to its event winners in 1976 (earlier winners were credited retroactively). Doyle Brunson won the Main Event that year — holding ten-deuce, as he would again in 1977.
1978–1979
Super/System
Doyle Brunson self-published his strategy book in 1978; retitled Super/System in 1979, it set out aggressive no-limit play and is often called the most influential poker book ever written.
1979
The Poker Hall of Fame
Benny Binion founded the Poker Hall of Fame. Its first seven members were Johnny Moss, Nick Dandolos, Red Winn, Corky McCorquodale, Sid Wyman — and, as honorary picks, Wild Bill Hickok and Edmond Hoyle.
1990
Hold'em comes to California
In Tibbetts v. Van de Kamp, a California appeals court confirmed that Texas hold'em, a community-card game, isn't the "stud-horse poker" banned in 1885 — securing its place in the state's card rooms.
The boom
Online poker, the hole-card camera and an accountant from Tennessee.
1998
The first real-money online game
On January 1, 1998, Planet Poker dealt a $3–$6 Texas hold'em game — the first real-money poker game played online.
1998
Rounders
John Dahl's film with Matt Damon and Edward Norton was a modest hit at release and became a cult favourite that many future professionals — Chris Moneymaker among them — credit for getting them into no-limit hold'em.
1999
The hole-card camera
The UK's Late Night Poker was the first show to reveal players' hidden cards to viewers, using a camera under the table. Henry Orenstein, a WSOP bracelet winner, had patented the idea in 1995; the World Poker Tour made it famous.
2001
PokerStars launches
Isai and Mark Scheinberg launched PokerStars as a play-money site in September 2001 and added real money that December. It became the largest online poker room in the world.
2003
The World Poker Tour on TV
Steve Lipscomb's World Poker Tour premiered on the Travel Channel on March 30, 2003 and became the network's highest-rated show.
2003
Moneymaker wins the Main Event
Chris Moneymaker, an accountant and amateur player, turned an $86 online satellite into a Main Event seat and beat 839 players for $2.5 million — the first champion to qualify online. The "Moneymaker effect" set off the poker boom.
2004
The European Poker Tour begins
Founded by John Duthie and sponsored by PokerStars, the EPT started in Barcelona in September 2004; Sweden's Alexander Stevic won €80,000.
2004–2005
Harrah's buys the World Series
Harrah's Entertainment bought the WSOP and the Horseshoe brand in 2004 and moved the series to the Rio in 2005; the casino itself was sold on to MTR Gaming.
2006
8,773 players
The 2006 Main Event drew 8,773 players — a record that stood until 2023 — and Jamie Gold won $12 million.
2006
UIGEA
On October 13, 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act became law, barring gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments for unlawful online bets. PartyPoker and others left the US market.
2007
Texas makes it official
The Texas Legislature formally recognised Robstown as the birthplace of Texas hold'em — on tradition rather than historical evidence.
The modern game
Crackdowns, legal online poker, solvers and record fields.
2011
Black Friday
On April 15, 2011, federal prosecutors indicted the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker and seized their domains, forcing the biggest online poker sites out of the US market. In 2012 PokerStars settled with the Justice Department for $731 million and took over Full Tilt.
2011
The Wire Act opinion
A Justice Department opinion released in December 2011 concluded that the federal Wire Act applies only to sports betting — clearing the way for states to legalise online poker.
2013
Legal online poker returns to the US
Nevada dealt the first legal, regulated real-money online poker hand on April 30, 2013. Delaware and New Jersey followed in late 2013.
2015–2017
Computers crack heads-up poker
The University of Alberta's Cepheus essentially solved heads-up limit hold'em in 2015, and in 2017 Carnegie Mellon's Libratus beat four top professionals at heads-up no-limit.
2018
States share their players
New Jersey joined Nevada and Delaware's shared online player pool on May 1, 2018, under the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement the first two had used since 2015.
2019
Pluribus beats the pros at six-handed poker
Pluribus, built by Carnegie Mellon and Facebook AI, beat elite professionals at six-player no-limit hold'em — the first AI to beat top humans in a major game with more than two players.
2020
The pandemic and the hybrid Main Event
With casinos closed, online poker traffic surged. The Main Event was split into an international and a US leg, each starting online and finishing at a live final table (in Rozvadov and Las Vegas). The two winners, Damian Salas and Joseph Hebert, met heads-up at the Rio on January 3, 2021. Salas won.
2023
Doyle Brunson dies; the first 10,000-player Main Event
Doyle Brunson, the "Godfather of Poker", died in May 2023 at 89. That summer the Main Event passed 10,000 players for the first time (10,043), and Daniel Weinman won a record $12.1 million.
2024
A record field, and the World Series is sold
Jonathan Tamayo won the Main Event from a record 10,112 players. Caesars then sold the WSOP brand to NSUS Group, GGPoker's backer, for $500 million, keeping the Las Vegas series for 20 years.
2025
Mizrachi's summer and WSOP Paradise
Michael Mizrachi won the Main Event for $10 million and was voted into the Hall of Fame on the spot. In December the new WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas ran a $25,000 Super Main Event with a record $60 million guarantee; Bernhard Binder won $10 million.
2026
A record World Series and a 22-year-old champion
The 57th World Series drew a record 251,899 entries across 100 events. Lucas Jumalon, 22, won the 9,208-player Main Event and $10 million — the second-youngest champion ever.
Common questions
- Where did poker originate?
- In the United States in the early 19th century, most likely around New Orleans and the lower Mississippi. Its likeliest ancestors are the French game poque, the German pochen and the English game brag. The earliest description of the game is Joseph Cowell's account of poker in New Orleans in 1829.
- Did poker come from the Persian game As-Nas?
- Probably not. The idea was popular for a long time, but modern gaming historians point out that As-Nas is only documented after poker already existed, so it is more likely a relative than an ancestor.
- When was Texas hold'em invented?
- Nobody knows. Texas tradition — recognised by the state legislature in 2007 — says the first hand was dealt in Robstown in the early 1900s, but there is no record from the time. What is documented is that Texas road gamblers brought it to Las Vegas in the 1960s.
- When was the first World Series of Poker?
- In 1970, at Benny Binion's Horseshoe casino in Las Vegas. It was a series of cash games, and the players voted Johnny Moss the world champion. The Main Event became a tournament in 1971.
- What caused the poker boom?
- A combination of online poker, which let anyone play for real money from home, and televised poker with hole-card cameras, which made the game watchable. Chris Moneymaker's 2003 Main Event win — an amateur who qualified online for $86 — showed millions of people they could do it too.
- What was poker's Black Friday?
- April 15, 2011, when US federal prosecutors indicted the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker and seized their domains, forcing the biggest online poker sites out of the US market.
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Open the timerSources: Pagat's card-game histories, Etymonline on the word's first uses, the WSOP's own history, court and legislative records for the legal milestones, and PokerNews and Card Player coverage, checked in September 2026. “Contested” marks claims historians disagree on. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.