ABOUT THE GAME OF POKER : Page 2

No one knows surely where poker originated, when it originated, or how it got its name. The basic principle of poker is that the most unusual combination of cards is the winning hand. This is such an obvious basis for a game that there may have been ancestors of poker stretching back to the year 894 a.d., when playing cards were invented. (They were invented by the Chinese.) At least four hundred years ago the Persians had a game called As Nas in which there was a twenty-card deck, four players, five cards dealt to each, and betting on which player had the best hand. Since no cards were left over, there could be no draw; and the idea of stud poker had not yet been thought of. As early as the late 1600s, the Germans had a game that they called pochen, their word meaning to "bluff," or "to brag," and from this game developed the early English game brag and the French game poque. It cannot be proved but it is irresistibly plausible that our name poker derived from this French name poque.