There was a time in the Middle-East when things were not so chaotic. I believe it was for a few hours on a lazy Saturday, a few hundred years ago. The Crusades were over, and the Catholics had switched focus to farm women who may or may not have been witches. They put up less of a fight for those who considered torches and really long blades good tools of evangelism. This was also long before extremists started strapping bombs to their chests and sprinting into elementary schools, after being told some story about martyrdom and seventy-two virgins. Somewhere between these events, someone in what used to be Persia had the time to invent the game that would become poker.

During the 16th century a game was developed in Persia (today this country is Iran). Nobody knows who invented this game or even the origins of its creation, but one thing most historians agree on is that the Persian game of “Nas” was the precursor modern day poker.

Nas was played with 25 cards and 5 different suits. There are of course many differences from the game we know, but there are just as many similarities. If you play 5 card stud, you would probably recognize what was going on in Nas. The two games are just that similar. The Persian game also has similar poker hand rankings. For example, a three-of-a-kind in poker is the same as a three-of-a-kind in Nas.

Europeans traveling between the east and west brought Nas back home. They called the game “poque” or “pochen”. When citizens of Europe began to populate the new world, they brought the game with them. It was here in America where poker found a home. It grew to prominence in the American west, and has been a solid part of our American pop culture and identity ever since.

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