Poker facts
and 
a brief history of playing-cards

Last Update July 10, 2005

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#Five-card Stud
#Seven-card Stud
#Texas Holdum
#History

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Five-card Stud

If our were in a game of five-card stud with six other players, here's what you might expect to see in the way of hands.

Three or four of the seven players would have no pair.
Three players might have one pair
It would take three deals to see two pair.
It would take seven deals to see three of a kind.
It would take thirty seven deals to see a straight.
It would take seventy three deals to see a flush.
It would take ninety-nine deals to see a full house.
It would take 575 deals to see four of a kind.
It would take over 10,000 deals to see a straight flush 
It would take 92,800 deals to see a royal flush.

Of course it is unlikely that all seven players would stay in the hand until the end.

Now if you are playing five-card draw, things really get complicated.  Usually the game is played allowing players to drawn only one or two cards.  Then the odds become more like those in a seven-card stud game. 

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Seven-card Stud

Texas Holdum

In the game of seven card stud there are 133,784,560 possible hands.  Generally, only the best five of the seven cards can be used to determine the rank of the hand.  Consequently, there are many combinations that can have two or more five-card hands imbedded in it.  As a result, it is nearly impossible to come up with an accurate count of all of the types of hands and make the total come out to 133,784,560.  The table below is my best guess.

Though the betting rules are substantially different, the number of possible hands and
the ranking of hands is the same for both Texas Holdum and Seven Card Stud

History of playing-cards and poker!

Historians aren't very precise in their estimates as to when playing cards first came on the scene.  It is generally accepted that the earliest form of playing cards appeared in China prior to the twelfth century.

Historians believe that in addition to their amusement value, early playing cards were also used to quell man's almost insatiable desires to participate in games of chance.  Furthermore, the production of playing cards with colorful, complex, artistic designs developed into a form of professional competition among artists and printers.

The first documented evidence of the existence of playing cards appears in a French register in the year 1392, when a unnamed artist was commissioned to paint three sets of cards for the diversion of the king.  Several of these cards are still miraculously preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

These hand-painted cards were the popular Tarot Cards.  The invention of the Tarot Cards is attributed to the Knights Templar somewhere around 1200.  There is very little written on just how the Tarot Cards were used in games, but it is evident that the design of today's fifty-two-card deck is based on the design of the Tarot Cards.

The popularity of Tarot Cards  was spread throughout Europe by wandering bands of Gypsies who used the Tarot Cards as a mystical tool for predicting the future.

In America there is evidence that cards of a very crude form were used by American Indians long before Columbus arrived.  Cards consisting of certain designs printed on leather have been found in ancient Indian artifacts.

There is also a popular legend that Columbus's sailors superstitiously threw their gaming cards into the sea when they encountered a severe storm on their voyage to America.  And when they landed, they fashioned new cards from tree leaves.

The first recorded evidence of cards in America appears in the Plymouth Colony Record of 1633 where several persons were fined two Pounds apiece for playing cards in public.

The earliest known card game resembling poker was played in Germany around 1525.  This was, however, a three-card game recognizing only a pair, three-of-a-kind, and a flush.  In early European poker, there was just one round, and the cards were dealt "show down" style.

By about 1700 the skills of bluffing and betting had been incorporated into a five-card game called "brag" in England, "poken" in Germany, and "poque" in France.  Actually "poken" in German means, "to bluff".  Of course the English word "poker" comes from the German word "poken".

Poker came to American colonies by way of French visitors to the Louisiana Territory.  The game quickly spread up the Mississippi River.  Poker played an important role in amusing Civil War troops on both sides,  At one time poker was know as the national card game of America.

American poker was not mentioned until 1829 when actor John Cowell published his memoirs.  It wasn't until 1834 that poker was adapted to the fifty-two card deck that is used today.  Prior to that, poker was played with twenty cards, the ten through ace.  In 1859 the game of poker appeared in a book about card games.

True modern-day poker is only a five-card game with no wild cards.  Books on poker say very little about seven-card stud and don't even mention six-card stud, three-card monte, and Indian.

Edmund Hole was an English lawyer who wrote a book on three games of cards; piquet, whist, and quadrelle.  None of these games are played today.  Hoyle died in 1760, long before poker became a popular game.

When one writes a book entitled, "Poker, According to Hoyle" that's about as intelligent as writing a book entitled, "Fulton, On Diesel Engines".

At one time, in certain forms of Canadian poker, four consecutive parts of a straight beat one pair.  Four parts of a flush beat a four-card straight. The ranking of these poker hands makes sense because the odds of getting a pair is 1:2.5.  The odds of getting a four-card straight is 1:7.  The odds of getting a four-card flush is 1:25.5. The odds of getting two pair is 1:21

Poker players are at their best advantage (or least disadvantage) when playing stud poker.  In five-card stud, each player can see 29 of the 35 cards dealt in a seven-player game.  That means that each player can see 83% of the cards in the game.

In seven card stud, each player can see 30 cards or 86%.

In five-card draw the player can only see her/his own five cards or 14%