About Us
BURNandTURN.com is here to provide poker players of today, tomorrow, and yesteryear the opportunity to explore and understand the world of poker. With poker making such a major impact on society today, we have taken it upon ourselves to provide players and fans from all over the world a website that will constantly keep you informed of poker's current events, your favorite players, game improvement strategies, and much more.
This website was created by a few tight friends who are huge fans of poker and, like many of you we can't get enough of it. We thought it would be a cool idea to create this product not only for ourselves, but for the rest of the public to have some fun with. While we were hanging out and playing poker there were a lot of ideas and questions being thrown around about what was missing in the mainstream of poker. As fans of poker we always like to keep updated on the inside and out of the poker world, but we found ourselves having to jump from one place to another to fulfill all of our needs. So, we came up with BURNandTURN.com. It is our goal to have a one-stop shop for all of your poker needs, and we feel that we have accomplished that.
History of Poker
As with many pieces of history, the origin or Poker is debatable. Many historians believe that Poker was derived from the earlier card games; Pochen, Ganjifa, Poque and Nas. These games were played with 25 cards and had 5 suites. Although these games had some different aspects; hands and hand rankings were very similar to today's 5 card stud Poker; High Card, Pair, Three of a Kind. Even though, the origin of poker began outside of the United States, it's clear that modern day Poker popularity began in the Southern parts of the U.S.A.
Poker as we know it today was born on the water's of the Mississippi where men working on the steamboats played the game to pass time. Although gambling was gaining in popularity during these days, many Southern towns passed laws against playing Poker. Players caught were barred from certain communities and the unlucky ones were tarred and feathered or lynched by vigilante groups.
After the spread of Poker via river boat in the Mississippi, the next spread of Poker was via train to California during the booming gold rush years. The Civil War in the United States is when the poker explosion began. Thousands of soldiers played the game in their barracks in both the North and South. The Civil war is also responsible for the adaptation of the game into games like stud poker, the draw and the straight. By the time the Civil War had ended, poker was one of the most popular card games all over America.
Over the years the game of Poker has further evolved through many backroom games to the present day casinos around the world. These casino follow very strict laws and have taken poker from the underground rooms where cheating was much easier and allowed players to play the game in an environment where legitimacy is much higher. This has also allowed Poker to develop a better name for it along with the people who play the game.
Poker is quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of entertainment. With the addition of the table cam, people all over the world are tuning in each week to follow their favorite Poker player on TV programs such as the World Poker Tour broadcasted on the Travel Channel or the World Series of Poker televised on ESPN the leading sports channel in the United States and all over the world.
