18 Oct 2024 Poker has been around for hundreds of years, but there are some poker facts and details which may still blow your mind and give you something to think about. Here are 25 mind-blowing poker facts you probably didn't know. Fact #1 Do you know why the streets in poker are called flop, turn, and river? Originally, the flop was called the turn and the turn was simply known as fourth street. Then the term flop came from the sound the dealer made when he flops the first 3 cards. As this became colloquial, fourth street began to be known as the turn. The turn got its name because it can and will turn the tide of the hand. The name river came from the Mississippi river boats on which poker was played during the 1800s. Sometimes, cheaters would deal themselves an extra card after the hand was supposed to be complete to improve their own hand. If caught, however, they would often be thrown overboard into the river from where the name came. Fact #2 According to history buffs, players only started using 52 cards to play poker after the 1830s. Prior to this, only 20 cards were used with 4 players. The game back then was less convoluted, the 4 players were each dealt 5 cards and wagering would begin on who had the best hand. The 52-card deck came about to accommodate a greater number of players, thus also giving rise to flush as an additional recognized combination. Fact #3 In 1881, a poker game took place in the Bird Cage Theater in Tombstone, Arizona, which lasted for an astonishing 8 years, 5 months, and 3 days. The buy-in was $1,000 up front, which translates to about $30,000 today. Seven high-stake poker players would play at a time, and notable figures got in on the game, including Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and John Hurst. It's estimated that about $10 million was exchanged during the course of the whole game, and the Bird Cage retained 10% of that money. The tournament was forced to end as the Bird Cage Theater was closed down abruptly due to a series of dramatic events. It was said that mining activities at the Grand Central Mine, which was just a few miles away, had dislodged an underground water pipe. The surge of water caused significant flooding of the Bird Cage Theater, forcing its owners to shut down the game. Fact #4 In Texas Hold'em poker, there is a starting hand known as the Anna Kournikova. This name refers to the ace and king combination. The name is derived from the professional tennis player Anna Kernikova, who, despite her high profile and considerable public appeal, never won a professional singles tournament. The hand ace-king is so named because it is visually appealing but often does not win much like the tennis star's career outcomes. Fact #5 In 2009, two men allegedly found a bug in International Game Technology's Game King video poker device and used the glitch to win approximately $430,000. Unfortunately, when they got caught, they were brought up on federal hacking charges. However, their clever lawyer argued the case, saying, all these guys did is simply push a sequence of buttons that they were entitled to push. The case was dismissed. Fact #6 There is a myth among poker players that wearing dirty clothes or rather the same clothes you wore during a winning streak rids you of bad luck. WSOP Main Event winner Pius Heinz took this to the next degree by wearing the same white hoodie for the entirety of the 2011 main event until he finally won it. Fact #7 Ever wondered why Japanese gangsters are called Yakuza? Well, they got their name from the worst hand dealt in a traditional Japanese card game similar to poker. This game is called Oicho-Kabu and you can wager on it, much like poker. You get 3 cards and the total of these 3 cards are added up with the total's last digit deciding who wins. If you get an 8-9-3 pronounced Yakuza in Japanese, however, tough luck. This card combination gives you a score of 0 making it the worst one you can get. Similarly, the Yakuza want you to view them as the worst – or the baddest, if you prefer the internet lingo. Fact #8 In 2007, a man named Andrei Karpov was so desperate to stay in a poker game, he put his wife up as a stake after he'd run out of money. Sadly, he lost the hand. His wife Tatiana was so angry that she left him and eventually married the winner Sergey Brodov. Fact #9 An eagle was proposed as a fifth suit by card companies in 1937. As we know already, it was not well received and never came to fruition because people had to buy all new decks. Fact #10 You might have noticed that the Ace of Spade card is different from the rest of the bunch. There's a very good reason for this – taxes. It actually stems from the 17th century. Back then, the law required card manufacturers to pay taxes. Various methods were used to show that the tax was paid including a physical stamp on the highest card of the deck, which is of course the Ace of Spade. From around the 17th century, card manufacturers started putting their identification marks on the Ace of Spade and it quickly became a tradition. In fact, some designs were so intricate that they were patented in order to protect them from illegal copying. Fact #11 You might have witnessed Johnny Chan playing poker with an orange next to his chips, which has become a symbol of good luck for him. Initially, Johnny Chan used to smoke four packs of cigarettes a day but decided to quit in 1982 to improve his physical well-being. Since smoking was permitted in casinos at that time, he began bringing an orange to his game to mask the smell of cigarettes. However, when Johnny Chan won the WSOP Main Event in 1998, the orange was promoted from Natural Air Filtration System to Good Luck Charm, now having pride of place beside Johnny Chan every time he competes. Fact #12 Just like Johnny Chan, Sam Farah is also a non-smoker. However, his good luck charm is a cigarette, albeit an unlit one. Sam doesn't have any particular cigarette that he considers his lucky charm as he changes them all the time, especially after a losing hand. To this day, he is convinced that a lucky cigarette helped him make it all the way to heads up in the 2003 WSOP Main Event. The cigarette myth started when Sam was having a losing day and a friend of him suggested they take a smoke break. Sam did not feel like smoking but his friend put a cigarette in his mouth and told him to keep it there and his luck would change. That's exactly what happened and Sammy has done it ever since. Fact #13 In 2007, Hal Lubarski propelled himself into the record books by becoming the first blind player to cash in a WSOP event. Lubarski finished in 197th place in the 2007 Main Event, taking home $51,000. A dealer helped him play by whispering the cards to him. After the spotlight from the WSUP, Full Tilt Poker signed him up and set him up with a special program so he could play online poker by having the cards read out to him. Fact #14 Men can play in ladies' events in the World Series of Poker. However, to deter male players from joining these events, the entry fee for women is set at $1,000 whereas for men, it stands at $10,000. Fact #15 In the state of New Mexico, there is a law that if two candidates for some office have the same number of votes, the result is determined by some game. A real case of this law was recorded in 1998 in the town of Estancia. James Farrington and Juan Carlson each had 68 votes. First a coin was flipped which determined the poker game and then James won and became the mayor of the town. Fact #16 In the 1800s, about 2,500 riverboat gamblers played poker on American waterways. By contemporary accounts, no more than four of these poker players were honest all the time. Also, a straight beat flush at this time. Fact #17 Most people and websites claim that the chance of getting a royal flush is approximately 650,000 to 1. But it's actually far easier. The 650,000 to 1 odds is of you flopping a royal flush. You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than flopping a royal flush in your poker career. But in a 7-card game like Texas Hold'em, the chances of hitting a royal flush by the river are only 31,000 to 1. Which means for an average online poker player who plays about 1,000 hands each day, he would probably hit a royal flush once every month. Fact #18 Ace in turn comes from the Old French word as meaning one. Historically, the ace in the playing deck had the lowest value and was denoted by the sign 1, but over time it became the dominant card. And in games such as poker or blackjack, the player can choose the value of the ace either as the highest value or as a 1. The French Revolution had a big impact on the ace's upward progression. It came to symbolize the supremacy of the common man over the kings. In addition to cards, the word ace began to be applied to people who had achieved the highest degree of excellence in their profession. Fact #19 On November 1, 2021, Zach Gensler set the Guinness World Record for the longest ever poker session, beating an 11-year-old record held by Phil Laak. Zach, a self-professed night owl accustomed to long drives without much sleep, spent a staggering 124 hours playing poker at the Resorts World in Las Vegas. To put it simply, that's over 5 days of uninterrupted play with only brief 5-minute breaks each hour. Unfortunately, it wasn't a winning session for Gensler as he was down about $1,200, but the Guinness World Record probably makes up a little bit for that loss. Fact #20 Johnny Moss is the only person declared WSOP Main Event Champion without actually winning the event. In the first WSOP in 1970, he was elected the best all-round player in a vote by his peers after several days of high-stakes card playing. Binion realized that improvements had to be made if the World Series of Poker was ever to gain the prestige the title suggested. The following year, the WSOP was played as a freeze-out. Seven poker players posted a $5,000 entry fee. Johnny Moss won the winner-take-all prize and therefore retained his title as world champion. Fact #21 There is an opinion that a deck of playing cards has some metaphysical significance. So 52 cards personifies the 52 weeks of the year, 4 suits, the 4 seasons of the year, and 13 cards of 1 suit signify the 13 phases of the lunar cycle. If you add up all the values of cards of a deck, it will come out to be 364, and if you add the joker, it comes to 365, which is the number of days in a year. Fact #22 The 4 suits correspond to the 4 classes of people. The spade corresponds to the nobility, diamonds to merchants, clubs to peasants, and hearts to clergymen. The 4 kings correspond to 4 great rulers. The king of spades is David, the king of clubs is Alexander the Great, the king of hearts is Chalamet, and finally, Caesar Augustus appears as the king of diamonds. Fact #23 If you think you have seen it all at the poker table, you probably haven't played in the Lady Luck Underwater Poker Tournament. In this annual unique event which took place in Florida, the final 6 players dive deep below the surface to play out the final table. Fact #24 During its infancy, poker was played with gold nuggets, gold coins, and even gold dust. It was hard to standardize units due to this, and the need for a standard unit soon became apparent. This is when the gaming houses and saloons came up with poker chips. Poker chips used to be made of ivory, bone, clay, and wood. Fact #25 In the history of the WSOP Main Event, nobody has ever won the title with pocket aces. However, two runner-ups lost the final hand when their pocket aces were stolen. This article was written by Dennis «Dennis_Stets» based on a video from the Poker Bounty channel.
