There are many theories that have come into existence that all support how poker came to be. It is hard to know which one to go with and which one to ignore. The best thing is to go with the facts which point to the first cards being recorded some time in the 13th century in China. The assumption being made is that poker is no older than cards are and that is accurately correct. In Europe, the cards are said to have arrived in 1360 but not directly from China, where they are said to have been thought of first. They were from Egypt through the entry point that was the port of Venice. These Mamluk cards (so named because of the Mamluk Empire of Egypt at the time) had no resemblance to the Chinese ones but those of India and Persia. The Mamluk cards were not really designed for Poker but rather for trick-taking.
Now that the cards had leaked into Europe, the 14th century burst fourth with card life where new designs and methods of card play were devised. Due to the many ideas that crept forth in the century there had to be established a system that could be used in and around Europe. This saw the establishment of Italian, French, German, Swiss and Spanish suite systems with a variety of playing methods. This was when the trump suit was formally introduced together with flushes, sequences and matches. All these were derived from the different suite systems that were established at the time. Dice games of this exact period in time may have given rise to numerical games but the details that surrounded the dice games are a little hard to reveal since documentation is insufficient.
Playing vying games with dice is a little hard to picture because of the secrecy issue that is engrained in the game of poker. This happened back then and since no reliable records are available, it is not easy to reconstruct the scenarios of the dice games. What is certain however is the existence of vying games which is similar to Poker. The closest relation to the game is however Brag which is considered a sibling to Poker. Most people tend to agree that the trick-taking games made way for Poker as the relationship cannot be denied.
The only area of disagreement was in the vying games where all the details are not brought to the light. This makes it hard to really know the rules and the principles that may have been employed at the time. What results in such a case is ambiguity since different parties could not really come up with more only than one way of vying. And since it happened in the past there are no recordings of how it happened. But in whatever the case the vying games that are said to have paved way for the legendary game of poker are the Equalization method and Brag style which some people refer to as the Matching Method.
This article was written by David L.