Legacies In Poker

If backgammon was played by historic luminaries like Kings James I and Henry, and the Duke of Albany, who used "a game of tables" to facilitate his escape from detention, poker has also its share of enthusiasts from among its most prominent personalities all the way up to the highest seat of American power.

President Harry S. Truman (president from 1945 to 1953) was said to have loved the game so much that he frequently introduced unorthodox variations with the use of numerous wild cards.

Before him sat another card aficionado who even made a nationwide speech holding his poker chips. Franklin D. Roosevelt (president from 1933 to 1945) was said to have emerged directly from a poker match before addressing the entire nation via the radio. He absently carrying along with him his chips that actually got him lost many times in his speech as he clicked them in his hand.

Three terms before him was Warren Gamaliel Harding (president from 1921 to 1923) was not only a poker lover but was also able to gather around him a clique of poker players from the White House itself. It was later labeled "The Poker Cabinet," with among its members the Secretary of Interior Albert Fall, the Veterans Bureau head Charles R. Forbes, and Attorney General Harry Daugherty, who was Harding's ally and staunch supporter since their Senate days. This group was bound to meet an ignominious downfall out of a trail of corruption that led to the three names mentioned above, and the death of Harding on August 2, 1923. It was believed that Harding devoted himself more to pursuing his poker games than national interest.

Further into American history was a U.S. Confederate cavalry general by the name of Nathan B. Forrest, who, through a game of draw poker, added to the list of all-time card legends. Down to his last $10, he gets into a poker game to win himself several hundred dollars and emerge out of his bankruptcy.

Famed American gunfighter Wild Bill Hickock is another poker proponent who had inadvertently contributed to the games legacy and gave reason to why August 2 must be somehow observed by the poker world. On that day in 1876, he arrived in a place called Deadwood in Dakota Territory. He enters a saloon with three companions to play poker. Customarily, his choice seat was situated against the wall so that he faces the door, thus a full view of everyone entering the premises. This night, however, he made no opposition to the person in his favorite seat, and opted to take the one that positioned his back to the door. Moments then, a rival gunfighter named Jack McCall entered the saloon and gunned down Hickock with a bullet through the head. At that time, Hickock had a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights, after then came to be known as "the dead man's hand."