When was poker first played?
It can be argued that poker, in its modern sense, was first played on riverboats on the Mississippi River in the early nineteenth century, but the origins of the game are believed to be much older. The sixteenth-century card game known as ‘primiera’in Italy and ‘primera’ in Spain has many similarities to modern day poker and, in turn, provided the basis for the seventeenth-century games known as ‘poque’ or ‘pochen’, which were played in France and Germany, respectively.
Poque was subsequently transported across the Atlantic Ocean by French colonists to territories in North America, which was acquired by the United States in the early years of the nineteenth century. The name ‘poque’ was anglicised to ‘poker’ by English-speaking settlers and, thereafter, the game evolved to resemble the modern version, with a 52-card deck and five-card hands for each player.
The evolution of Las Vegas from a cultural backwater to a major tourist destination in the early twentieth century may have done plenty for the local economy, but casino operators were not keen on poker from a money-making perspective. Nevertheless, as the only casino game where gamblers could play against each other, rather than the house, poker was popular with patrons, so most gambling houses ran a poker room.
Down the years, different versions of poker, including five-card draw, seven-card stud and the current favourite, Texas hold ‘em, have fallen into or out of fashion at various times. Nevertheless, while the ‘boom’ period in the early years of the twenty-first century may have subsided, poker remains the most popular card game on the planet, with an estimated hundred million players worldwide.
Return to Player (RTP) is the term used to describe the proportion, or percentage, of the money staked on a slot machine that is returned to players in prizes over time. In the United Kingdom, by law, a slot machine must clearly display the percentage RTP figure but, even so, RTP is frequently misunderstood. It is also worth noting that there is no statutory minimum RTP figure for slot machines.
The history of slot machine gambling, on- and offline, is awash with tales of players who have filed unsuccessful lawsuits against casinos for absurdly large sums of money that they believe they should have won because of a malfunction. Slot machines can malfunction for a variety of reasons, but it is not often that a player who has legitimately won a massive jackpot walks away without it.