Although little is known about the invention of Texas hold 'em,
the Texas State Legislature officially recognizes Robstown, Texas
as the game's birthplace, dating the game to the early 1900s.
After its invention and spread throughout Texas, hold 'em was
introduced to Las Vegas in 1967 by a group of Texan gamblers and
card players, including Crandell Addington, Roscoe Weiser, Doyle
Brunson, and Amarillo Slim. Addington said the first time he saw
the game was in 1959. "They didn't call it Texas hold 'em at the
time, they just called it hold 'em... I thought then that if it
were to catch on, it would become the game. Draw poker, you bet
only twice; hold 'em, you bet four times. That meant you could
play strategically. This was more of a thinking man's game."
For several years the Golden Nugget Casino in Downtown Las Vegas
was the only casino in Las Vegas to offer the game. At that time,
the Golden Nugget's poker room was "truly a 'sawdust joint,'
with... oiled sawdust covering the floors." Because of its
location and decor, this poker room did not receive many rich
drop-in clients, and as a result, professional players sought a
more prominent location. In 1969, the Las Vegas professionals were
invited to play
Texas hold 'em at the entrance of the
now-demolished Dunes Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. This prominent
location, and the relative inexperience of poker players with
Texas hold 'em, resulted in a very remunerative game for
professional players
Interest in hold 'em outside of Nevada began to grow in the 1980s
as well. Although California had legal card rooms offering draw
poker, Texas hold 'em was prohibited under a statute which made
illegal the now unknown game "stud-horse". However in 1988, Texas
hold 'em was declared legally distinct from "stud-horse" in
Tibbetts v. Van De Kamp, 271 Cal. Rptr. 792 (1990). Almost
immediately card rooms across the state offered Texas hold 'em.
(It is often presumed that this decision ruled that hold 'em was a
skill game, but the distinction between skill and chance has never
entered into California jurisprudence regarding poker. After a
trip to Las Vegas, bookmakers Terry Rogers and Liam Flood
introduced the game to European card players in the early 1980s.
Objective
In Texas hold 'em, like all variants of poker, individuals compete
for an amount of money contributed by the players themselves
(called the pot). Because the cards are dealt randomly and outside
the control of the players, each player attempts to control the
amount of money in the pot based on the hand the player holds.
The game is divided into a series of hands or deals; at the
conclusion of each hand, the pot is typically awarded to one
player (an exception in which the pot is divided between more than
one is discussed below). A hand may end at the showdown, in which
case the remaining players compare their hands and the highest
hand is awarded the pot; that highest hand is usually held by only
one player, but can be held by more in the case of a tie. The
other possibility for the conclusion of a hand is when all but one
player have folded and have thereby abandoned any claim to the
pot, in which case the pot is awarded to the player who has not
folded.
The objective of winning players is not winning every individual
hand, but rather making mathematically correct decisions regarding
when and how much to bet, raise, call or fold. By making such
decisions, winning poker players maximize long-term winnings by
maximizing their expected utility on each round of betting.
The hold 'em explosion
Hold 'em tournaments had been televised since the late 1970's, but
they did not become popular until 1999, when hidden lipstick
cameras were first used to show players' private hole cards on the
Late Night Poker TV show in the United Kingdom. Hold 'em exploded
in popularity as a spectator sport in the United States and Canada
in early 2003, when the World Poker Tour adopted the lipstick
cameras idea. A few months later, ESPN's coverage of the 2003
World Series of Poker featured the unexpected victory of Internet
player Chris Moneymaker, an amateur player who gained admission to
the tournament by winning a series of online tournaments.
Moneymaker's victory initiated a sudden surge of interest in the
World Series, based on the egalitarian idea that anyone – even a
rank novice – can become a world champion.
Beyond the World Series, other television shows – including the
long running World Poker Tour – are credited with increasing the
popularity of Texas hold 'em. In addition to its presence on
network and general audience cable television, poker has now
become a regular part of sports networks' programming in the
United States.
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