Four sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman playing Texas Hold ‘Em, a variant of poker. Four men sitting around a table gambling on a card game.
16 March 2022
The name of the card game poker is probably from either the French poque, a bluffing card game that dates to the mid eighteenth century, or directly from the French word’s source, the German Pochen, a similar game. The -er ending may be from the French verb poquer, to place a bet in the game, or it may be an American attempt to pronounce poque with two syllables. The OED plumps for the borrowing from French, but given that poker is an American invention and given the large number of German immigrants to the United States in the early nineteenth century, a direct borrowing from the German is plausible.
The earliest reference to the game that I can find is from a commentary on US Senator Henry Clay in Washington, DC’s newspaper The Globe on 3 September 1832:
Who challenged and shot at Humphrey Marshall, a distinguished member of the Kentucky Legislature?
Who is notorious for his skill and dexterity at Lieu, poker and Kentucky Brag?
Egad, now, if you call that morality; we are “quite used up.”—Centre County (Pa.) Democrat.
This is obviously reprinted from the Centre Democrat from a slightly earlier date, but unfortunately that paper is not digitized, nor does it exist in any libraries that I have access to. So, I cannot confirm an earlier appearance.
Sources:
“Communication.” The Globe (Washington, DC), 3 September 1832, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2006, s.v., poker, n.4.
Photo credit: David Finley, 2009, US Navy photo. Public domain image.