Nobody ever knows how a classic card game really originates because at the time it does so its originators do not know that it is going to become a classic and so keep no record. In any case the process of origination rarely takes place at a single table but mostly among a group of players within a given locality, so gaming ideas and variations pass around without anyone being sure who thought of them first. By the time a game description appears in a book it has by definition settled down into some sort of fixity, and may be more than a generation old - especially in the case of games played by a community that circulates its cultural artefacts orally rather than in writing. The following summary of the genesis of Poker is therefore no more than a surmise, albeit at least consistent with the evidence outlined above.

Original Poker, a game in which four players received five cards each from a 20-card pack and vied as to who held the best hand, evidently originated in the New Orleans some time between 1810 and 1825. Its gaming milieu was that of French-speaking maritime gambling saloons, especially those of the Mississippi steamers. Its name suggests that its first players felt they were continuing the tradition of playing a game called Poque in which one said Je poque to open the betting. At this time and place, and before it underwent development, Poque probably denoted a five-card vying game consisting of the central section of a formerly tripartite game of the same name. Its ultimate ancestor must have been the substantially similar German game of Poch (Pochen, Pochspiel), which can be traced back to the 15th century.

Poque itself was played with 32 or 36 cards by up to six players. Its transition to one played with 20 cards by four players may have been influenced by the known contemporary French vying game of Bouillotte, or by the speculated Persian game of As-nas, or both. As-nas would be an ideal candidate were it not for the fact that there is no evidence for any knowledge of it at that time or place.

In the 1830s, having spread northwards along the Mississippi and westwards with the expanding frontier, Poker had adopted its anglicized name and become increasingly played with 52 cards to accommodate a greater number of players, thus also giving rise to the flush as an additionally recognized combination. Under the influence of Brag, its three-card British equivalent, it adopted the draw. This led to its further and more rapid expansion of popularity, as Poker-players preferred the additional round of betting after the possibility of improving a promising hand, while Brag-players preferred the wider range of combinations offered by a five-card hand. Draw Poker, first recorded about 1850, marks the coming of age of what Allen Dowling rightly calls ?The great American pastime? - a game which, as Burton observes, could equally well have been dubbed ?five-card Brag?.