CHAPTER EIGHT
Betting Games

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SOME SAY POKER WAS INVENTED IN CHINA and introduced to the West by Marco Polo. Others claim it’s derived from a seventeenth-century Persian game called As Nas. A more likely link is Poque, a French betting game based on a four-suit deck of hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs. Poque was introduced into the Louisiana territories by French settlers; by the early 1800s, a new game called Poker was all the rage in New Orleans. The rest, as they say, is history.

For most of the twentieth century, Stud Poker (both five- and seven-card) was the most common and popular form of the game. In the 1990s, all this changed with the invention of the in-table television camera. Previously Poker was not a telegenic sport. After the in-table camera came along, millions of home viewers began watching professional players bluff and swagger in real time. And the games in which the most money was at stake, notably No-Limit Texas Hold’em, exploded in popularity.