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The actual facts are blurred in the mists of time. Not too many people agree about how exactly this game came into existence but the general belief is that it was the Chinese who developed the first basic version of the game and it can be traced way back to 900 A.D. So if this is the accepted line of thought, it would then be logical to assume that Texas Hold’em is based on the ancient Chinese game, dominoes. There are records to prove that one of the Chinese emperors, Mu-tsung played what was known as ‘domino cards’ on New Year’s Eve way back in 969. So going by the accepted theory, Texas Hold’em can trace its lineage back so many years.

Well, maybe it goes even farther back in history. Some of the archeological digs in Egypt have revealed that a game

very like Texas Hold’em was played there too. In fact some of the cards that have surfaced are very like the Texas Hold’em cards. These were dated as belonging to the 12th and the 13th centuries but it might just be that the game had been in existence for much longer. It could also be traced back to India and the old card game called Ganjifa that was played there.

Persia too had a game that was recorded as having been played in the seventeenth century. It was called ‘as nas’ and had a special deck of 25 cards and five suits and it had to have five players. However, this is a claim that has not quite been proved as there is only one single record about it.

Did Texas Hold’em originate in France? In the latter part of the 15th century, there was a game called ‘poque’, a French game which was taken all the way to New Orleans. Now there is a lot of verifiable fact to prove this and let’s face it, the name does sound very like ‘poker’. The old French game had bluffing and betting too, with four suits and a deck of cards that is very like the one used in Texas Hold’em. From New Orleans, the game made its way to different parts of the country, through the river and its steamboats, the wagons and the trains till it became a part of every part of America.

There were a few variations that crept into the game of ‘poque’ especially during the Civil War and one saw the spread of games like stud, straight poker and draw poker. Texas Hold’em was a descendant of draw poker. In 1875 came the introduction of the joker or the wild card and the game shed the last vestiges of European influence.

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