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column by John Cosway is a mix of 50 years of media memories
and 15 years of buying and selling experiences via live and online
auctions, flea markets, antique stores and markets etc.
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 By
John Cosway
The phenomenal, worldwide growth of live and televised poker
has novice newcomers wondering when and where the game was first
played.
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- Mention the history of poker to most North Americans and
they will have visions of steely-eyed gamblers aboard Mississippi
riverboats and in smoky Wild West saloons.
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- Their scenario would include sawdust on the floor and pistols
and whisky close at hand. Those who got too lucky (or were caught
cheating) often got dead.
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- While you might think poker was a product of the Wild West,
all bets are off when it comes to pinpointing the birth of the
game. It is a subject historians find perplexing.
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- Did poker evolve from a game in ancient China; 13th century
Egypt; Italy's Primero game in the 16th century; Persia's Treasure
Cards in the 17th century; or France's Poque, England's Bragg
or Germany's Pochen in the 18th century?
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- Whatever.
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- We do know from the Legends of America site (www.legendsofamerica.com)
the first American casino was opened in 1822 in New Orleans.
It was a 24-hour business and included poker tables.
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- Poker was also being played on the Mississippi riverboats,
in saloons and other haunts. It would move to other eastern states
and then west with the wagon trains to mining camps and new settlements.
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- Innovative players, from early French settlers to Civil War
soldiers, introduced numerous variations of the game along the
way.
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- Whatever the game, cheats were common. In fact, poker pushed
Three-Card Monte, the game of choice for cheats in the 1820's
and 1830's, to the sidelines.
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- The game of choice through most of the mid-1800's and into
the early 1900's was a five-card game called Faro, with each
player playing against the dealer or the house. Today, it is
Texas Hold 'Em, a game for up to nine or 10 players.
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- Poker now has a language of its own: 7-7 are walking sticks;
9-5 is a Dolly Parton; K-A is Big Slick; 5-10 is Five
and Dime; J-5 is Jackson Five; 10-4 is a Broderick Crawford;
10-2 is a Doyle Brunson, a Texas Hold 'Em hand that won
Brunson two consecutive major tournaments; A-A are Bullets or
Pocket Rockets; K-K are Cowboys; J-J are Fishhooks etc.
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- But best known is Dead Man's Hand - black Aces and black
8s.
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- That is the hand James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok,
39, was holding at Nuttal & Mann's saloon in Deadwood, South
Dakota, when shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall
on August 2, 1876. (McCall, hanged on March 1, 1877, was buried
with the noose around his neck.)
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- A decade earlier, on July 21, 1865, Hickok and a David
Tutt got into a heated argument during a poker game in Springfield,
Missouri. They settled their spat with a quick-draw gunfight
at dusk in the street. Tutt's shot at 50 yards missed, Hickok's
didn't.
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- Hickok wore many hats in his 39 years, including gunslinger
(after Tuttt's last stand), marshal, wagon master, trail guide,
army scout and professional poker player. On the poker front,
he was said to prefer low-stakes games. It took just over a century,
but Wild Bill was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1979.
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- Other Wild West legends with a passion for poker included
Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson
and William "Canada Bill" Jones. Their mix of
poker, booze, babes and gunfights tainted poker's reputation
for more than a century.
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- Doc Holliday's rules of the game dispute with fellow player
Ed Bailey during a game in 1877 ended with Bailey dead.
Bailey, who had been looking at other players' discards, went
for his gun, but Doc fatally slashed his stomach with a knife.
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- And if you were wondering about the Canada in "Canada
Bill" Jones, this Three-Card Monte gypsy con artist and
card cheat adopted it after emigrating to Canada from Yorkshire,
England, He then headed south to fleece riverboat gamblers for
20 years.
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- Canada Bill died destitute in 1880 in Reading, Pennsylvania,
leaving a legacy of gambling stories and famous quotes, mostly
created at the expense of his marks.
- Two classic gambling quotes attributed to Canada Bill: "It's
morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money" and
"A Smith and Wesson beats four aces."
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- If you have heard today's TV commentators say a player "has
the nuts," that expression originates from Wild West days
when players, so confident they couldn't be beaten, would remove
the nuts from the wheels of their buggies and wagons and put
them in the pot. They were betting their buggies and wagons.
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- While poker was largely a male domain in the Wild West, women
were known to sit down with the men. Alice Ivers Tubbs,
aka Poker Alice, adopted poker after her miner husband, who taught
her how to play, was killed in a Colorado mining accident in
1871.
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- Poker Alice, a schoolmaster's daughter and a native of England,
quickly became one of the guys, drinking, swearing and smoking
cigars. She also shot two men, one fatally, before retiring to
New York, where she opened a combination card room/brothel.
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- Poker was outlawed in the United States in 1911, driving
the game into the back rooms of bars and pool halls, hotel rooms
and homes. Generally, poker games were played in seedy settings,
with occasional brawls and mob-related gunplay.
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- A 20th century poker game casualty was Arnold Rothstein,
the mobster rumoured to be behind the 1919 World Series fix.
He was shot dead in a New York hotel room on Nov. 4, 1928, after
welching on $320,000 in poker debts from a three-day poker marathon.
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- When Las Vegas legalized gambling in 1931, it was the beginning
of an eight-decade growth in poker, but it would take about seven
decades before its tainted reputation would be enhanced by worldwide
acceptance as a spectator sport.
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- Richard Nixon was a poker player and reportedly financed
his first election campaign with profits from games in the Navy
during World War 2. He gave up poker in 1952 after being named
as Dwight Eisenhower's running mate.
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- What turned poker into a popular 21st century spectator sport
was the invention of Henry Orenstein. The elderly New
Jersey millionaire inventor, who also invented Transformer action
figures, patented the tiny camera that allows TV viewers to see
all hole cards dealt.
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- Without that camera, which earned the Nazi concentration
camp survivor an induction into the New Jersey Inventors Hall
of Fame, televised poker would have remained in the same league
as watching grass grow.
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- Poker has evolved from elusive origins to televised international
tournaments being played around the world in lavish casinos,
with multi-million dollar prize pools.
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- No guns, no smoking, no swearing, no sawdust on the floor.
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- While today's more civilized and unarmed male and female
players eye million dollar prizes in live and online tournaments,
collectors eye a wide range of poker memorabilia.
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- Vintage poker chips made of wood, clay, ivory, plastic and
Bakelite are high on the Wanted list. A vintage wooden poker
rack and 283 vintage clay poker chips sold for $355US in a recent
auction.
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- Also in demand are vintage chips with logos, decorative chips,
chips from foreign casinos, wooden chip racks and carousels,
vintage decks of casino cards, whimsical dogs-playing-poker art,
casino caps, neon signs, head visors etc.
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- Books on poker, spanning three centuries, are also on the
list of poker items in the hunt. A recent eBay posting was for
The Game Of Draw Poker, by John W. Keller, published in
1887. Asking price: $175US.
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- An "authentic Bellagio poker table" used on the
set of the movie Lucky You to recreate the Bellagio Poker Room
recently sold on eBay for $2,400US. That is one way to enhance
your rec room home games.
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- We will leave the strategy of poker to authors of numerous
books on the game published since the 1820's. But there are a
few favourite quotes to share.
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- "If you know poker, you know people; and if you know
people, you got the whole dang world lined up in your sights."
- Brett Maverick. (fictitious TV character)
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- "If you can't spot the sucker in the first half an hour
at the table, then you are the sucker." - from Rounders,
the movie.
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- "Last night, I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot
cards. I got a full house and four people died." - Steven
Wright.
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- All things poker. Shuffle up and deal.
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- Other articles by John Cosway
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