Video Poker History

Video poker in its original form was a big failure, but today, advancement in design and technology have made it so popular you can even do it on your mobile phone and i-phone.

Video poker has its own history like any other game in casino gambling.  Truly, most of the video poker players are interested in winning payouts rather than being bothered about the roots and origins of the game. However, there are many who are keen to document the origins and the evolution of the games.

The relationship of video poker history and slots were confused in a bit because the Liberty Bell Slot was developed from the poker cards theme, however, the images were replaced with hearts, spades, bells and horseshoes instead of Kings and Queens used in the deck of poker cards. It should also be noted that slots machines do have a much older history than a video poker game.

The history of video poker has a close relationship with the history of slots; however, the process of “drawing of cards” in video poker differentiates it from slots. There is no drawing of cards in slots.

Slots were originally developed in 1891, a lot earlier than video poker games.  Five card draw was the theme of the original video poker games, which were developed then in the 1960’s. They were put in to public clubs for play in the mid 1970s.

Dale Electronics introduced the “Poker-Matic” video poker machine in 1970; however, the technology in the model was not user friendly and the primary marketing of these games were not a big success.

In 1975, Walt Fraley in Las Vegas put forth a new model.  Again, this machine was also a failure, because players were not able to visualize the reels spinning and they did not feel that the spin was realistic.

The real success of the Video Poker Games began with the SIRCOMA introduced in the year 1979.  The video poker games reflected the actual drawing concept in video poker games rather than reflecting the spinning of reels like in slots. This eventually had people develop a trust in the gaming process and that was the start of the trust line for video poker games.

The game which was originally formatted for 5-card draw was introduced with a number of variants. After the advent of online gaming and micro gaming processes since 1994, the video poker concept graduated to online desktops and laptops and they have reached to where they are today.

Big sized video poker machines are now playable on mobile phones and iphones too. An average video poker game player is getting to be more comfortable with the online and mobile versions of video poker than in land based video poker machines today.