Texas Holdʼem is now almost a synonym for poker, but that has only been true for about fifty years. Before then, casinos were dominated by stud games, and you could barely find a Holdʼem table in Las Vegas.
How did it get from small-town Texas to being the main poker game worldwide? The answer is not simply “it is a better game”. It involves one tournament, one book, one camera, and one accountant.
- ✓In 2007 the Texas Legislature formally recognised Robstown, Texas as the birthplace of the game.
- ✓It only reached Las Vegas in 1967, brought by a group of Texan players, and just one casino spread it.
- ✓The first WSOP champion in 1970 was not played out — the other players voted for him.
- ✓The hole card camera, from 1999, turned poker into something a television audience could follow.
- ✓In 2003 an amateur who qualified through an online satellite won the Main Event, and the global poker boom followed.
The start: a Texas town, and Las Vegas in 1967
There is no reliable record of exactly when Texas Holdʼem was invented; most accounts point to the early 1900s in Texas. In 2007 the Texas Legislature formally recognised Robstown, a small town near Corpus Christi, as its birthplace — which is as close to an official position as exists.
What set it apart from the games of the day was the community cards. In stud games every player holds their own cards and the information is scattered. Holdʼem gives everyone five shared cards and keeps only two private. That change means the same board means something different to each player, and it makes working out what an opponent holds the central skill. If the flow is unfamiliar, start with what poker is.
The real turning point was 1967, when a group of Texan players led by Crandell Addington, Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim brought the game to Las Vegas. At the time only the Golden Nugget spread it, and the card room was rough — sawdust on the floor, and no wealthy customers.
That detail matters later: because the venue was not presentable, this group of professionals kept looking for a better stage.
1970: how the WSOP began
In 1969 the Texan player Tom Moore ran an invitational “Texas Gamblers Reunion” at the Holiday Hotel and Casino in Reno, which Crandell Addington won. Commercially it was not a success, but it proved one thing: gathering the strongest players in one place makes for a spectacle.
The casino owner Benny Binion saw the potential. In 1970 he ran the first World Series of Poker at his own Las Vegas casino, Binionʼs Horseshoe.
That first edition looked nothing like today’s. There was no elimination format — the players simply played cash games, and at the end those present voted on who was the best. In the first round of voting everyone chose themselves, so the organisers had to ask a second question: apart from yourself, who is the strongest? Johnny Moss came out on top, becoming the first WSOP Main Event champion.
The elimination format that defines tournaments today only arrived the following year, in 1971.
1978: Super/System made strategy public
Through the 1970s poker strategy was essentially a set of secrets passed between players. Winners did not explain their thinking, because doing so meant handing over their livelihood.
In 1978 Doyle Brunson published Super/System, which set out how the best players of the era actually thought, with chapters on different games written by himself and several other professionals.
The effect ran both ways. In the short term, plenty of professionals thought Brunson had destroyed his own edge by publishing. Over the longer term, the book moved poker from “experience and instinct” to a skill that could be studied and argued about — and everything that followed, from strategy books to training sites to solvers, traces back to that shift.
Television and the hole card camera
For poker to work as a spectator sport, one problem had to be solved: an audience that cannot see the cards cannot follow what is happening.
The answer was the hole card camera. Channel 4’s Late Night Poker in the UK began using the technology in 1999, letting viewers see each player’s cards. It changed the experience completely — once you can see someone betting big with nothing, you understand what makes the hand remarkable.
ESPN’s WSOP coverage in 2002 and the launch of the World Poker Tour in 2003 carried the format into the American mainstream. For the first time, poker had a regular television audience.
2003: one accountant changed everything
In May 2003, a 27-year-old accountant from Nashville, Tennessee named Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP Main Event and its $2.5 million first prize.
What made it a story was how he got there: he qualified through an $86 satellite on an online poker site rather than paying the $10,000 buy-in. And with hole card cameras already in place, the whole run was broadcast.
The message could not have been more direct — an ordinary office worker, for under a hundred dollars, can beat the best professionals in the world on television.
Online player numbers exploded over the next few years, and the Main Event field went from hundreds in 2003 to thousands. That period became known as the poker boom, and its trigger is generally credited to this one champion — which is where the phrase “the Moneymaker effect” comes from.
Why Holdʼem was the game that won
Plenty of other poker variants existed at the same time, including Omaha, stud games and mixed formats. There are structural reasons Holdʼem became the default:
Simple rules, difficult decisions. Two hole cards and five community cards — the rules take five minutes to explain, and a beginner can sit down the same day. Yet the depth of judgement required to play well is effectively unlimited, which is what lets it attract beginners and professionals at once.
It broadcasts well. Two hole cards per player is something an audience can remember, and it fits on screen. Omaha’s four cards per player doubles the information in the same frame and is much harder to follow.
It suits tournaments. The fixed betting structure and shared board make it straightforward to run as a large-field freezeout. For how the game maps onto each format, see cash games vs tournaments.
The head start got locked in. The WSOP Main Event is No-Limit Texas Holdʼem, which made it the game that decides a world champion — a position no other variant has been able to challenge since.
