The Origins of the Most Popular Card Games

We've all played our fair share of card games - whether you enjoy playing obscure card games with weird rules with your friends or opt for more widely known games like poker. Card games have been part of our daily entertainment for centuries and everyone enjoys a good game every now and then. There is a reason some of them are considered classics and played by millions of people worldwide: poker, blackjack and bridge are undeniably the top three most popular card games. But how did they start out?

Poker

When we say card game, we instinctively think of poker. Combining strong elements of luck and strategy, the gambler's favourite deserves the top spot. It is claimed that poker has roots that can be traced as far back as 1,000 years - some historians pinpoint them at a game played by a Chinese emperor during the 10th century and most see strong similarities with "As Nas", a 16th-century Persian game. In Europe, a game called "poque" was all the rage in 17th-century France and its counterpart "pochen" dominated in Germany. They were both based on "primero", a Spanish game where players were each dealt three cards and bet on the outcome. Bluffing was a key element of the game - as is the case with modern-day poker. From there, French colonists brought the game to the US and then Queen Victoria reintroduced it in Europe in 1871, where it quickly caught on, reaching its height in the 1970s.

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Blackjack

The history of blackjack is perhaps the one of the most obscure when it comes to popular card games. Modern-day blackjack can be enjoyed in many variations, as the variety of blackjack games on JoeFortune indicates: they range from classic blackjack to Double Deck, Zappit, European Blackjack and Perfect Pairs. But it all probably started with a French game called Vingt-et-un - or 21 in French, which is another widely used name for blackjack in many countries. The game originated sometime before the 18th century and King Louis XV's Royal Court played it frequently. Other historians trace the origins of Vingt-et-un to the Italian game Sette e Mezzo, which means seven and a half, the French Quinze (Fifteen) or Trente-un (Thirty One), a game popular in Spain. All of these games included attaching certain values to certain cards and then drawing cards to reach a predetermined threshold or get as close as it was possible, in order to win.

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Bridge

Bridge is often compared to chess, as both games require players to develop strategies and are regarded as mental exercises that require a lot of skill. Bridge originated in England and it is mentioned for the first time in a sermon by Bishop Latimer, dating back to 1529. Its predecessor was whist, a contract card game that has many similarities to modern-day bridge. In 1834 the first signal was added to the game by Lord Henry Bentinck and many variants of whist were developed over time in England, including triumph, ruff and whisk. Some historians claim that it got its name from the Galata Bridge in Istanbul, where British soldiers used to play a game similar to whist while they were stationed there during the Crimean War. To this day, bridge remains a widely popular game and the king of contract card games.

These origins stories serve to demonstrate one thing: that people fiddled around with decks of cards since time immemorial and they all enjoyed games that are very similar, if not identical, to the ones we get excited about today.