Why is Texas hold 'em so popular? - James McManus

Throughout the 1800s, in saloons across the West,

you could find cowboys locked in tense standoffs.

But these weren’t shootouts.

They were simply playing cards—

for a mountain of chips worth their weight in gold.

Most men wore loaded pistols in case a player was caught cheating.

When they prepared to make their bets, however,

these cowboys weren’t focused on their holsters or their cards,

but rather on their opponent’s face.

Because not even a bullet could protect them from a well-executed bluff.

From its earliest incarnations, poker has always been a battle of nerves.

The game first emerged around 1800 in the melting pot of New Orleans.

At this time, two games ruled the card tables:

French poque played with a 20-card deck, and English Brag which used 52-cards.

Both these games saw players being dealt five cards from a four-suit deck,

and then trying to make the best hand possible according to a simple hierarchy.

They would then wager on whether or not they had the best hand—

either adding more money to the pot

or folding and forfeiting their chance to win it.

But since each player's cards were only revealed at the end of the hand,

someone with bad cards could always bluff—

betting enough to scare his opponents into folding.

Both games had slightly different hand combinations, but most importantly,

Brag allowed players to discard and draw new cards,

making better hands more likely and allowing for another round of betting.

Eventually, the Southerners merged the two games

into a new version of poque— which they pronounced pokuh—

that created bigger pots and opportunities for more complex bluffing.

This winning combination of guile, guts, and gambling caught on quickly.

But its popularity skyrocketed after the invention of the steamboat,

which carried livestock, goods, and card games

up the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri rivers.

By Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860,

Americans in every state and territory were playing the newfangled bluffing game.

And while many played for low, friendly stakes,

some gamblers put their homes and livelihoods on the line.

These life-changing bets even found their way into popular novels

like “Gone with the Wind,”

where Scarlett O’Hara’s father wins an entire plantation

in a single hand of poker.

But as pots became bigger, so did the temptation to cheat.

Some players enlisted an accomplice to spy on opponents

and used props to communicate their hands.

Others marked important cards with nicks, dents, or invisible ink.

But perhaps the most common method was sneaking a cold deck into the game.

Cold decks were pre-sequenced to give victims powerful hands

that encouraged them to bet big,

while giving the cheater an even better one.

However, even cheaters had to keep up with the game’s constant changes.

As poker moved west with the Gold Rush, new variants emerged.

Five-card Stud became the game of choice

among notorious gunmen like Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill Hickok.

With four rounds of betting,

Five-card Stud produced even more lucrative pots,

encouraging so much cheating that California outlawed the game in 1885.

Meanwhile, back in Texas, another variant emerged

to solve the common problem of having too many players and not enough cards.

This game, known as Texas Hold'em,

became a favorite because its low ratio of private, hidden cards

to shared, exposed cards

allowed for plenty of deductions and tactical maneuvering.

Even more exciting was no-limit Hold’em, which allowed players to go all in,

betting everything they had at any point in the hand.

In 1928, Hungarian polymath John von Neumann

sought to explain the nuances of betting and bluffing in mathematical terms.

His work became the foundation for a whole new branch of mathematics

called game theory,

which has grown to be vitally important not only in high-stakes poker,

but in economics and military strategy.

In the late 20th century, game theory became essential

for navigating the geopolitical bluffing game of nuclear warfare.

Today, America’s card game is an international affair,

attracting players from over a hundred countries

to the annual World Series of Poker.

Fortunes are made and lost every day on casino floors, poker websites,

and in thousands of live and online tournaments.

So while a single game's outcome will never be certain,

poker is definitely here to stay.