28 Fascinating Facts and Figures about Poker

Poker's best facts sit where gambling, gunfights and American history overlap. This collection gathers 28 of them, covering the game's origins in the nineteenth century, the probabilities behind the cards, the biggest prizes the World Series of Poker has ever paid out, and the presidents, authors and Old West legends who sat down to play.

It's a game of risk and reward, patience and aggression, and a social game that brings people together. There's a bit of edginess and a connection to the past, and that attracts many to the game. From pistols to politics to prison, poker players have seen it all.

History of Poker

• 1845 – The first year poker is mentioned in Hoyle's Games, the bible of card games. The book wasn't complimentary. As James McManus records in Cowboys Full: The History of Poker, the 1864 edition still dismissed poker as a game decided by luck and energy more than skill, and one of the easiest of all card games to cheat at. 
   
• 2 August 1876 – The date the lawman, gunslinger and cardplayer Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back and killed at Nuttal & Mann's Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory (now South Dakota). He was allegedly holding A♠ A♣ 8♠ 8♣, forever known as the Dead Man's Hand. 
   
• 1 January 1998 – The first real-money online poker game is dealt. The software was glitchy, but it started a multi-billion-dollar industry. 
   
• 30 March 2003 – The World Poker Tour debuted on the Travel Channel, showing hole cards for the first time on American television. Gus Hansen won the Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio for $556,460, and the show became an instant hit. 
   
• 23 May 2003 – The date Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP Main Event after gaining entry through a $39 online qualifier. He took the gold bracelet and $2.5 million, and proved an amateur could win on poker's biggest stage.

Poker by Numbers

• 4 – The number of players who have won the WSOP Main Event back-to-back: Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson, Stu Ungar and Johnny Chan. 
   
• 2 – The number who have won it three times: Johnny Moss and Stu Ungar. Chan came close to three in a row after winning in 1987 and 1988, and was denied in 1989 when he lost heads-up to Phil Hellmuth. 
   
• 6 – The percentage chance of being dealt a pocket pair in Texas Hold'em (5.88%, precisely). 
   
• 12 – The percentage chance of flopping a set while holding a pocket pair (11.76%, precisely). 
   
• 17 – The record number of WSOP bracelets won by Phil "The Poker Brat" Hellmuth, one of the best poker players of all time. His most recent came in 2023, when he took down a $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty event for $803,818. 
   
• 0 – The number of WPT titles won by Phil Hellmuth, despite five final table appearances on the tour. A title is still on his bucket list. 
   
• 7 – The number of players at the first WSOP in 1970. Johnny Moss was elected champion, because the tournament format didn't arrive until a year later. A silver cup was his prize, and the championship gold bracelet wasn't added until 1976. 
   
• 21 – The age Phil Ivey turned when he could finally use his real name at poker rooms in Atlantic City. He's since won 11 WSOP bracelets, the most recent in 2024, and one WPT title. 
   
• 20 – The number of cards used in early versions of the game, dealt to four players. The 52-card deck we know today came in during the early 1800s.

Show Me the Money!

• $12.1 million – The largest WSOP Main Event payout ever, won by Daniel Weinman in 2023 from a field of 10,043 entries. It edged out the $12 million Jamie Gold collected in 2006, a record that had stood for 17 years.

• $94 million – The 2024 WSOP Main Event prize pool, the biggest in live poker history, built by a record 10,112 entries. 
   
• $8.5 million – The amount the film Rounders made on its opening weekend in September 1998. Starring Matt Damon and Ed Norton, it cost $12 million to produce and grossed $22.9 million. It was one of the first films to show a realistic look at poker on the felt, along with the New York underground scene, and it picked up a cult following once it reached cable and DVD. 
   
• $4,000 – The advance poker-playing author James McManus received in 2000 to cover the Ted Binion murder trial for Harper's magazine. The son of Benny Binion was allegedly murdered by a stripper and her boyfriend. McManus used the money to enter the WSOP Main Event, finished fifth for $247,760, and turned the whole episode into Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker in 2003. 
   
• $2 million – The amount Johnny Moss is alleged to have won from Nick "The Greek" Dandalos in a heads-up match in 1949. The Texan battled Dandalos for five months, and some estimates put the total above $4 million. Doubts have been raised about the game in recent years, though Jack Binion has said it did happen, at the Flamingo.

Poker People and Places

• Richard Nixon – The former U.S. president was said to be quite a rounder, pocketing about $150 a month playing in the Navy, a nice haul in the 1940s. He isn't the only politician or president to play poker, but he's probably the most successful. Rumour has it he used $5,000 in winnings to finance his first run for Congress in California in 1946.
   
• American Civil War – Soldiers played while awaiting the next battle. It passed the time, and five-card stud was a regular part of military camp life.
   
• Detroit – Despite its name, Omaha Hold'em, now one of the most widely played types of poker games, was apparently first dealt in this city in the 1970s. It was given the moniker later in Las Vegas, borrowing the name of the town in Nebraska from a more obscure game in which a player had to use exactly two of their cards. Nebraska itself had no casinos at all until voters approved gambling at racetracks in 2020, and Omaha got one of its own in 2024.
   
• Atlantic City – This city was the place to play on the East Coast for much of the 1980s and 1990s. The scene centred on the Taj Mahal (featured in the film Rounders) and hosted significant events like the U.S. Poker Championship. Three live poker rooms still operate in the city today.
   
• Mark Twain – The author of classics like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn was a regular cardplayer as a young riverboat pilot along the Mississippi. The game popped up in his stories occasionally, but he was cautious about who he played. Crooks and cheats were known to work the ships looking for easy marks.
   
• Texas – The first game of Hold'em is alleged to have taken place in the south Texas town of Robstown, recognised by the state's legislature in 2007 as the birthplace of Texas Hold'em. The game had moved as far north as Dallas by the 1930s before making its way to Las Vegas and the rest of the country.
   
• Barbara Enright – The first woman to win a WSOP bracelet in an open event, taking the 1996 $2,500 Pot-Limit Hold'em title for $180,000. She has three bracelets in total and finished fifth in the 1995 $10,000 Main Event, the first woman to reach that final table. Spain's Leo Margets became the second in 2025, finishing seventh.
   
• Tombstone, Arizona – Legend has it this was the home of the longest poker game ever, at the Bird Cage Theater. By the theatre's own account, the game ran non-stop, twenty-four hours a day, for eight years, five months and three days, with as much as $10,000,000 changing hands and the house keeping 10 per cent. Tombstone offers a real glimpse of the Old West, where shootouts were frequent and the Bird Cage was one of the toughest nightspots around. Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Diamond Jim Brady, George Hearst and Adolphus Busch are among the Old West figures said to have played in it.
   
• Herbert O. Yardley – This World War I cryptanalyst and code breaker, an icon of U.S. Intelligence, offered stories of his own exploits at the table alongside strategy and the maths behind the game in his 1957 work, The Education of a Poker Player.