National Poker Day

The games historian David Parlett heads his section on the theory 'often cited, never proved'. He says it rests on no more than a strong resemblance, that no description of As-Nas exists before 1890, and that As is not a Persian word but comes from the French for ace, so any borrowing probably ran the other way.

History.com reports roots going back nearly a thousand years, including a tenth-century Chinese emperor. Parlett sets a far lower ceiling: poker cannot predate playing cards themselves, first positively attested in thirteenth-century China, and he dates the game to the first or second decade of the 1800s.

A district judge did so hold in 2012, but the Second Circuit reversed the following year and expressly declined to decide the point, calling the skill question inapposite to the appeal. New York's courts put it this way: the skill of the player may increase the odds in the player's favor, but cannot determine the outcome regardless of the degree of skill employed.