Know Your Poker

It's said that to be a good poker player one must be a part-time mathematician, a student of finance, an amateur psychologist, and a professional psychic. Certainly the first requisite is true. Any well-turned poker player is hip to percentages. If such an expert holds three of a kind in draw poker he knows the odds of receiving a full house are 15 to 1, not a chance worth fishing for. Or if he is sitting on four toward a flush, he understands that chances are 4 to 1 against him. A competent player also is wise to the secrets of economics, when to bet, how much, and how. He is savvy too, on the subject of human nature, about how people react under pressure, about how to tell when the proposition is play-acting and when it's for real. And finally, if he is really a quality player, the poker lover has that uncanny sixth sense for cards that helps him psych out what the other fellow is going to do and know how the cards will fall.

Although poker today is a round-the-world pastime, it's really an American card game, the great American game, in fact, ranked several notches higher in popularity than its only competitor, contract bridge. Though its origins are obscure, chances are it was devised somewhere in the eastern desert kingdoms, probably in Persia, for a Persian game called an-nas bears the modern game more than a coincidental resemblance. It came to Europe, historians believe with returning crusaders and by 1700 it was a common round in every tavern and alehouse. One version of this oriental diversion was the game of pochen in Germany. Another was the still-played English brag. In France card players anted-up in a contest called poque. This last version, the French Version, was the one that would capture the fancy of Americans. Poque migrated to the States with French settlers. In 1803, after the Louisiana Purchase, English-speaking gamesters quickly picked it up. They modified it, Americanized it, and claimed it for their own.

The origin of the name "poker" is peculiarly American. Almost as soon as poque arrived in the United States it became part of every Mississippi gambler's repertoire. Now most river-going gentlemen, we know, were Southerners born and raised, with accents as thick as jam on bread. Not able to parler francais, these high-class hustlers nonetheless had to somehow pronounce the name of the new-fangled foreigner's game, and they did so with incomparable fractured French. Poque quickly became poo-kah. For over a generation this was the accepted pronunciation. But the metamorphosis was not over. During the early years of the Civil War, Yankees and Rebels occasionally fraternized during a lull in the battle. Their favorite pastime was cards, and during these sessions poker began its first infiltration of the North. The card-rattling Yankees with their short-clipped, nasal accents then proceeded to reduce rather than drawl out the vowels, changing the ah to er and the poo back to po. In the end the game was no longer poo-kah but pok-er.