Last week when looking at the first reference to poker in print — the first "hand report," as it were — we noticed it contained a lot of the same details that frequently turn up in later cultural representations of poker. It described a game played in secret, in the dead of night, culminating in an improbable four-aces-versus-four-kings showdown that suggested cheating might have occurred. Cursing and violence then punctuated the scene, spicing things up even further.
Other early references to poker similarly present the card game as unsafe for newcomers, helping further establish its dangerous reputation even as it first began to make its way up the Mississippi and across the still young, still developing country.