Poker History

Poker is the quintessential American card game. American founding fathers played poker including the Native Americans.

In the nineteenth century every stat and territory west of the Mississippi River had casinos. Most all the of the casinos offered poker games. Even the Mississippi River Boats in Mark Twains day had poker games on the boat. Later in the nineteenth century New York and other big eastern cities was offered in the plush casinos.

Saratoga Springs Richard Canfield owned one of the most popular casinos called " The Casino" with high stakes poker games.

In 1910 government shut down all the casinos. In 1912 Nevada declared gambling illegal, which took 20 years before the state realized it was there only source of income and then legalized it once again. Then the casinos realized they could make more money on slots, roulette, craps, blackjack so poker was moved to back rooms. Now in recent years poker has a much larger profile with Nevada casinos bringing it back into the main stream. With world series poker games.

In the late 1908's and through the 1990's legalized gambling has exploded with the Indian Casino Gaming Act by Congress in 1987. In the late 1990's the introduction of online casinos. With gambler's all over the world playing poker online against the casino. In the 2000's poker rooms opened up all over online playing against other poker players. Now this is become extremely popular. College students play poker all the time online as well as professional poker players, and just the average player. Most poker rooms online allow you to chat with other players.