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Poker History
Poker is a game of skill, with many card games you rely totally on the luck of the draw, find out all you need to know about the poker game

Poker History

The birth of Poker has been convincingly dated to the first or second decade of the 19th century. Three games successively dominated poker, particularly as limit-betting games in the USA, during the first century and a half of poker history: draw, seven-card stud, and holdem, with each game cornering over 2/3 of the market during their ascendancy. Draw was far ahead in popularity until sometime in the early 20th century, when seven-card stud took the lead, which it kept until about 1980, thriving in the armed forces during WWII, and then during the rise of the Nevada casino industry in the fifties and sixties.

Five-card stud played a role as a major big-bet game from it’s invention in the 1850’s right up until holdem really took off in the 1970’s, but it was never as popular as either draw or seven-card stud, which are both excellent limit-betting games and as such appealed to a mass market which five-card stud does not suit.

In the late-seventies or early eighties sometime, holdem overtook seven-card stud in popularity, helped on it’s way to the top by the huge leap in status it gained through being used as the world championship game from the early seventies, and also by a surge in player numbers as US gambling laws were liberalised. Unlike seven-card stud and five-card stud, holdem plays equally well with any form of betting from limit to no-limit. It quickly made five-card stud more or less obsolete, and steadily reduced seven-card stud’s share of the market from about 70% in 1971, to less than 20% today.

There are many online poker rooms On the Internet as of today (2008), so picking a specific site to play Internet poker at is not an easy task today, altough all big gaming sites such as Party Poker, Poker Stars, etc are good choice. Online poker has gained its boost in 2002 and one of the best site is 888, previously Casino on net. We also recommend 888 for Online Bingo players because 888 is one of the top gaming establishments since the very early days (around 1997). They are also a public company now, so their financial base is very strong.

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