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When was poker first invented and how did it evolve?

If you have recently become interested in playing poker online seriously, you may want to know when the game was invented and how it evolved over time. After all, poker is now one of the most popular games in the world, but it did not used to be.

 

When was poker first invented? — While there isn’t any agreement with historians as to when poker was first invented, it probably came from the United States with influence from similar games from England, France, Ireland or Persia. After all, these are all countries where similar games have been played for hundreds of years, so poker could have originally come from any of them.

 

There is evidence that the game was often played in the early to mid-18th century in the Mississippi River area of the United States. One book written in 1836 about Dragoon Campaigns even mentions poker as a game that was played.

 

Over time the game’s popularity spread throughout the United States, and then on into Europe and beyond.

 

Poker in the modern day — While we may think poker has been popular for hundreds of years, it is actually only since the early 1970s it has become a game that is now played by tens of millions.

 

This began when the first large poker tournaments began to take place. These sparked people’s interest and imagination due to some of the major players that came out of them. People like Bobby Baldwin and Puggy Pearson.

 

As more and more people began to watch these tournaments, they also started to play poker themselves. Realizing many of them did not have the skills they needed to do well in the game, in the late 1970s the publishing industry started to publish poker strategy books aimed at the masses.

 

Soon poker began appearing in films and on TV shows, embedding the idea in people’s minds more and more that poker was a game that was cool and fun to play.

 

The big explosion of poker popularity, however, hit in the late 1980s when the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed. This allowed casinos to open up on Native American lands, and poker to become a game that was available to even more people.

 

21st century poker — By the early 21st century, the audience for poker became even bigger when gambling on the Internet was not only popular but accepted.

 

Now poker was able to be accessible by almost everyone in the world. Any time, from anywhere and with stakes from low amounts to very high.

 

International poker tournaments also began to be aired around this time. Both live on TV and on the Internet.

 

Suddenly a game that probably began to be played around 200 years ago in the southern states of United States was being watched and played by people all over the world. Simply by being able to access it at online casinos on their computers.

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