Today Poker is enjoying a tremendous rebirth in not only the United States, but the world as well! With high stakes games on television and tournaments on line.
 
If we had been alive during the early days of our country it would have been hard to imagine how the game would evolve in 200 years!

Poker has been in America as long as there has been an America. Believed to be a very old card game, with roots stemming from the 16th century, it made it's way in to the United States and became very popular, especially in the "Wild West".

The first western saloons were hastily thrown together lean-to's or tents, as the towns grew, the saloon would prosper and take on the traditional trimmings of the Old West, where a cowboy could strike up a deal, the traveler might quench his thirst, or a miner might try for a little while to forget about his life in the mines.

The whiskey served in those hard days was a far cry from what we have today, it would normally be brewed from raw alcohol, burnt sugar, and chewing tobacco, with such names as Forty-Rod, Red Eye, and Coffin Varnish! Sometimes the barkeep would add such delicacies as turpentine, ammonia, cayenne and gun powder to make the concoction more tasty! No wonder Sarsaparilla became popular!

Along with all this, a good game of poker was a necessity, many stories and legends evolved from this period, adding to the mystic of the period.

Since spas and hot tubs hadn't been invented yet,  gambling became a popular way to spend the time while traveling by riverboat from port to port

Legend has it that it was during these riverboat gambling heydays that an interesting story occurred in 1832. On a Mississippi steamboat four men were playing poker, three of which were professional gamblers, and the fourth, a hapless traveler from Natchez. Soon, the young naive man had lost all his money to the rigged game.
 Devastated, the Natchez man planned to throw himself into the river; however, an observer prevented him from his  suicide attempt, he  joined the card game with the "sharps." In the middle of a high stakes hand, the stranger caught one of the card sharks cheating and pulled a knife on the gambler, yelling, "Show your hand! If it contains more than five cards I shall kill you!" When he twisted the cheater’s wrist, six cards fell to the table. Immediately, the stranger took the $70,000 pot, returning $50,000 to the Natchez man and keeping $20,000 for his trouble.
Shocked, the Natchez man stuttered, "Who the devil are you, anyway?" to which the stranger responded, "I am James Bowie."

Such was the life and times of our early west!

Find more interesting stories on Kindle.