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The game of Poker was developed sometime during the early 19th century in the United States. Since those early beginnings, poker has grown to become an extremely popular pastime throughout the world. 

In the 1837 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle, R.F. Foster wrote: "the game of poker, as first played in the United States, five cards to each player from a twenty-card pack, is undoubtedly the Persian game of As-Nas." By the 1990s some gaming historians including David Parlett started to challenge the notion that poker is a direct derivative of As-Nas.

There is evidence that a game called poque, a French game similar to poker, was played around the region where poker is said to have originated. The name of the game likely descended from the Irish Poca (Pron. Pokah) ('Pocket') or even the French poque which descended from the German pochen ('to brag as a bluff' lit. 'to knock')  

Yet it is not clear whether the origins of poker itself lie with the games bearing those names. It is commonly regarded as sharing ancestry with the Renaissance game of primero and the French brelan. The English game brag (earlier Bragg) clearly descended from brelan and incorporated bluffing (though the concept was known in other games by that time). It is quite possible that all of these earlier games influenced the development of poker as it exists now. 

Developments in the 1970s led to poker becoming far more popular than it was before. 

By the 1980s, poker was being depicted in popular culture as a commonplace recreational activity. 

In the 1990s, poker and casino gambling spread across the United States, most notably to Atlantic City, New Jersey In 1998, Planet Poker dealt the first real money online poker game. In 1999, late-night poker debuted on British television.

Poker's popularity experienced a massive spike, largely because of the introduction of online poker and hole-card cameras which turned the game into a spectator sport. Viewers could now follow the action and drama of the game on television, they could also play the game in the comfort of their own home. 

Poker is the name given to a variety of card games in which players’ hands are ranked by the cards available to them, whether held individually or shared by multiple players. 

Different poker games vary in the number of cards dealt, the hand rankings used, the number of hidden and shared cards available, the number of betting rounds offered and the betting procedures followed. 

Typically, the winner of each hand of poker is the player that holds the best-ranking hand when all cards are shown – this is known as “showdown” – or the player that makes the last uncalled bet, thus winning without needing to reach showdown.

For complete instruction on how to play Poker visit our How to Play Guides.