A profusion of western movies and gunfighter ballads has convinced the world that poker is a quintessentially American game, yet its roots go back hundreds of years. The Persians were said to play a poker-like game centuries ago. Germans played a bluffing game called Pochen as early as the sixteenth century; later, there was a French version called Poque. The French brought this game with them to New Orleans and its popularity spread — aided by the paddle wheelers that traveled the Mississippi. Poque soon became known as poker, and the rules were modified during the Civil War to allow cards to
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