Poker came to be during the first decades of the 1800s, not that long after the country in which the game originated first declared its independence. Both the game and the fledgling nation subsequently grew and developed together — you could say both experienced significant territorial expansion throughout the 19th century.
Just as the ever-changing concept of what "America" was and stood for would swell to include a multitude of different ideals and values, so would poker evolve into a uniquely adaptable game allowing for a remarkable variety of rules, variants, and methods of play.
We've been discussing an initial poker variant called "Old Poker," a game that typically involved a smaller deck (i.