Poker Deserves Recognition

Talk about Bridge, gin rummy or pontoon and you will think of a group of ordinary people playing their favourite game of cards. Mention poker-and you will conjure up the picture of pistol- packing cowboys who risk fortunes at the drop of a card,of cigar-chewing men playing for crippling stakes ...of a ruthless battle fought in grim earnest.  Not of an evenings pleasurable entertainment at the card table. Some people will tell you that poker is luck and bluff. Others are equally convinced that it is a game of pure skill. Most will agree that it can be very expensive hobby. I have learned that in poker you must always risk as much and no more than that , you can afford to lose to get the full flavour out of the game. 

It is true, poker must be played for money or in the form of money ( chips ). But even if you keep the stakes so small that it will be impossible for you to lose more than a couple of pounds during a whole session , you will still be able to enjoy the thrills and the fun that are in a game of poker. Nor do I agree with those experts who want to treat the game as a difficult exercises in mathematics.

 The time has come to give poker its proper place in the family of card games , as a game that is easy to learn and immense fun to play. A game of poker will give pleasure and excitement at any level of skill, but reward the expert more generously than any other card game.  It is a battle of wits so full of vitality and drama that it has kept poker at the top of popularity poll for card games for nearly half a century and in my opinion is the best card game ever.

History of the Poker Chip

You ever wonder how the poker chip came in use for the game of poker ? Well back in the 1800's , coins , gold nuggets and gold dust could be a might bothersome to keep up with.....not to mention that carrying it around and flashing it might be a good way to get knocked upside your head or even shot . So soon chips replaced them , as they were easier to manage. Chips were made from ivory, bone, wood, paper and a composition made from clay and shellac.

As with anything new though , cheats would try anything . The shady characters would sneak their own chips into the game. Often, the establishment would end the game with many more chips than they began. It was then that the bars and saloons started having the manufacturers  include a design to differentiate them from others places . The design could be engraved, embossed, inlaid or a paste-on sticker. Ivory chips were hand scrimshawed with numerals, initials, flowers, animals and just about any type of design.

In the 1880's  several companies started making Clay composition poker chips , and to this day they are still considered the best choice to use in my opinion. However a lot of the noobs to the game would not fork out good money on chips , so Plastics became the material of choice for less expensive home poker sets in the 1940's, and continue to be popular today. They are injection molded, long lasting, come in many designs and are easily obtained.

Source : PokerPages 

The Game of the Wild West

   _{A brief description on poker and how it all began}

     A product of American genius, poker is the most advanced and globally successful member of an ancient family of games including brag and primero. It originated around New Orleans during the 1820s, probably from a group of related games then chiefly represented by the french game of poque. Further evolution during the course of the nineteenth century turned it into the highly sophisticated game that it is today .

    Contrary to the popular opinion of those who do not play it, Poker is a game of skill. It also happens to be a gambling game, but only to the technical sense of the word-that is in the sense that it cannot be played for score points, like bridge or rummy, but only for hard cash, or at least tokens representing cash (chips). It also differs from bridge and other intellectual games in the fundamental sense that the latter are played with cards whereas poker is played with money. No physical card play is involved at all in poker. Playing-cards merely serve the purpose of providing raw material on which to excercise the skills of money management and practical phycology. An understanding of the basic mathematical principles of probability is helpful to the game but the skills involved are essentially phycological. It is the fact that you play the opponents and not the cards that makes poker the great leveller .