Yep, the game that everybody loves (now). Texas Hold’em, the best thing to come out of Texas since Buddy Holly.

And not too long afterwards, neither. Texas Hold’em (usually just “hold’em” when you’re in Texas) was just about exactly the same game in the 1960s that it is today. Same rules, same focus on strategy over luck and flash (if you like that, online slots may be more your thing), same group of unique characters hovered around the table.

A bunch of those Texas characters decided to pull up stakes and head west (and just think about that; Texas is about as much West as anyone could ask, but these folks wanted it even West-er!). To a little town called Las Vegas, just experiencing the biggest boom of it’s young life hanks to Elvis Presley and Howard Hughes.

Well, these hold’em-playin’ folks wasted no time getting Texas on the map (Texas Hold’em on the map in Las Vegas, I mean…Texas had been on the map for a couple hundred years by that point).  The likes of Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim captured the attention of poker-lovers everywhere, first at Downtown Las Vegas’ Golden Nugget Casino, then at the more reputable Dunes Casino on The Strip.

The Binion Boys started up their World Series of Poker right about this time, and Texas Hold’em was a natural show game…or would have been, if only the audience could actually see the real drama that was going between the cards and the shades.  That would have to wait another twenty years or so, by which time Hold’em was known all over the world.

Growing and spreading but never breaking through to the mainstream. Could it get any better? Well, yes and no. It got huge after the turn of the century, with celebrities and TV shows and sponsorships and on and on. The good news is that the Internet was also getting pretty huge itself right aroud this time, with online casino USA taking off, and the two were a match made in online heaven.

And then there was Chris Moneymaker…but that’s another chapter.