Before being elected as a president, Barack Obama was merely a junior statesman waiting for a chance to prove himself before the Illinois legislature. During this time, he started regular poker sessions in order to win friends as well as win over adversaries. At the same time as poker mat perhaps seem to be a scandalous choice for a president, especially with its issues on legality. According to the history of the game, it has been highly popular amongst numerous presidents of United States.

Author and historian James McManus, in his most recent book, reveals that a lot of other US presidents were fond of poker. We all know that Richard Nixon could sponsor his first congressional race with the poker winning collected from the World War II times, and was known as one of the savvy players. Harry Truman is known to play poker in the White House with the help of special chips that have a presidential seal embossed on them. He explained the attack of Hiroshima to the reporters during the poker game.

At the same time as baseball is popularly known to be America’s favourite pastime, the presidents have often chosen poker to communicate instructions within the masses. Abraham Lincoln was seen using the poker terminology to explain the foreign policy changes. We all know the famous square deal of Theodore Roosevelt, which also had its origin in poker. therefore since poker or online poker may perhaps not be legal in a few states, it happens to be one of the most popular card games in America and was enjoyed by several powerful men in the history.

Loads of people are interested in poker, either online or offline. The players are acquainted with the basic rules and strategies to win the game; however they often miss out on some of the factual information, related to the history of poker. We have listed down some of the interesting facts related to the most popular card game.

•    It has been estimated that there are about 65000000 people in United States that play poker on a daily basis. The first deck of playing cards was invented in China and then brought into Europe around the 1300s.

•    When Christopher Columbus came to North American subcontinent in 1942, the men who accompanied him used to gather leaves and draw pictures on them to play cards.

•    Poker was extremely popular amongst the riverboat gamblers in the 19th century. They used to spend time playing poker while sailing on the American coast lines. Out of all these gamblers, very few of these gamblers were honest and hence it led to a number of conflicts on the boats.

•    There was a proposition to add the fifth suit to the deck of playing cards in the year 1937. However the idea couldn’t be implemented since it would require a lot of people to buy newer deck of playing cards.

•    If we were to believe historical records, individuals such as Bill Hickok were considered to be the aggressive poker players, however if we compare them to the professionals today, they seemed to be terrible with the game.

•    The four suits in the deck of cards are actually influenced by the French where the “spades” would stand for royalty, the “diamonds” would depict merchants, “hearts” were used for the members of the clergy and the “clubs” were used for the peasants. However, each country has its own description for the suits of the playing cards.