I know that many of you will be celebrating Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, over the next week. It’s the end of the year of the Monkey and the start of the year of the Rooster. It’s an important time in the part of the world where I come from. Families reunite, work becomes less important.
Luck is a hugely important aspect to Chinese culture and this is true in the New Year especially. Washing hair, eating porridge, being near crying children are all things that some say are unlucky at this time of the year. There are also many people who think that you shouldn’t talk about money, or lend money too. Offices, businesses, shops all close.
However it’s clear that not everyone feels the same way. Chinese people don’t have many holidays. They work hard and the New Year is a big deal. Many people who work in cities on the eastern coast of China where many of the factories and jobs are will make their way home to their families, often travelling for days to travel inland. Chinese New Year sees some of the biggest traffic jams the world has ever seen – they can last for hundreds of kilometres. People arrive at train stations hours in advance just to make it home. Some people make huge efforts. It is the largest movement of people anywhere in the world every year. Almost 3 billion journeys are made over the holiday period.
So it’s only natural really that when people get home to see their family, they want to make the most of the holiday and celebrate well. If you are married you give money in red envelopes to younger unmarried people. But gambling is big. Sometimes for small amounts of money at home. It is important to stay up late the night before New Year to celebrate. Families play Texas Holdem, yes, but also a lot of other games too.
People also go out to the casino too, and look to win big (and spend big if they have to). Last year the casinos of Macau saw an increase in the number of people going there – up almost 5% compared to the month before. I will be playing cards for sure myself. But then that is something I do every day, so maybe the New Year card game is less special for me than it is for others!
Travel safely, and enjoy your rest.
Happy New Year.
Phua Wei Seng
Category: My news, views and fun facts
What language does the word poker originate from?
Finding out about the origins of poker is a bit like researching into genealogy. You have to work backwards, from the present (and the things we think we know) to the past (where the secrets really lie). We now think of Texas Holdem poker as an all American pastime. It’s where many of the best players and poker stars are, and where many of the big casinos are that poker is famous for being played at. And one of the country’s 50 states gives the name of its most popular variant of poker games – Texas Holdem. But the first records of a game called poker being played in what is now the United States is nowhere near Las Vegas, or one of the big casino cities we know today. In fact the first evidence we can find of a game like poker being played in the US is in New Orleans, in what was then the Territory of Louisiana. That’s the earliest evidence of poker being played, and the trail stops there. That doesn’t mean though that Poker is all-American. That’s because there was another game that was brought over to New Orleans by settlers from France, called poque. And that game was being played at the same time in the same place as the early hands of poker. Poque was similar to what we now know as poker – in how it is played, and also obviously in the name. It involves rounds of betting, community cards, and a show of cards at the end. So it seems that poker is, in fact, as American as Tarte Tatin, not apple pie!
The French, though, can’t claim all the credit with total certainty. There is no definitive link between modern poker games and poque. Just similarities. And to add to the mystery, there’s another country that has a pretty good claim to have had at least some influence. The German game of pochspeil, which at the time would have meant something like “bluff game”. The French game may even have derived from the German one, given how close the countries are to each other. So we can throw an Apple Strudel into the mix too!
We can never be a 100% certain where the name come from, but the French seem to have the best claim. Alongside the Statue of Liberty, and the federal constitution, poker is another American icon with a French origin.
The diamond suit in a pack of cards is thought to have evolved from another shape in use over 500 years ago in France.
Playing cards are a lot older than the game of poker, almost a thousand years older, and they originated in China. But because of trading routes like the silk road, cards made their way to the middle east and then to Europe by the middle of the last millennium, if not earlier than that. They came via Egypt. Swords, cups, coins and polo-sticks were the suits used in Egypt, and a lot of countries in Europe used some of those suits, and still do. But the French chose differently.
Traditional French playing cards still have these four suits – pike heads, hearts, clover, and paving tiles. And as you read these, you can see how close they are to the suits in the international deck of cards that is in use nowadays. Pike heads became spades in the British/American deck. Spades coming from the Spanish word spado meaning sword, so similar to pikes. Hearts remained hearts, so no explanation needed. The design of the clover has been kept for the suit we now know as clubs. But the name clubs refers to the suit bastoni or bastos still used in Spanish and Italian decks, which actually still depicts a club. So clubs is a hybrid of French and Italian/Spanish. The last of the four suits is the hardest to explain. Paving tiles were indeed rhombus shaped in those days, unlike nowadays when they tend to be square or rectangle. And nowadays, because of the playing card that came to be known as diamonds, we associate a diamond shape with a rhombus too. But we still don’t know why the card known as paving tile came to be known as a diamond. Because hundreds of years ago there wasn’t that association between the rhombus shape and the diamond precious stone. The stone was 3D, a hugely complex shape. A mystery. If you have an idea why – get in touch!
Paul Phua loves poker games, but the first card games he ever played were traditional Chinese ones at home with his family. One of the most popular card games in China is called Dou Di Zhu.
In China, card games exist in two parallel worlds. One world uses the Anglo-American deck of cards, and plays games known globally, such as the poker games we play in casinos. In the other world, though, you find decks of cards with different shapes, different characters, different numbers of cards, and different games to the ones played in homes and casinos across the West. There are also games that take something from both worlds. One of those games is called Dou Di Zhu, which translates literally as fighting, or fight the landlord. It has 54 cards, and can be played using a traditional Anglo-American deck (you’ll need the two jokers), but it doesn’t have to be – there are also special Dou Di Zhu decks. It’s one of the most popular card games in China, and one that Paul saw played at home when he was young.
A bit like learning how to play poker, it’s both easy to pick up, but can take a very long time before you get good at it – there are lots of permutations of winning hands, and they can be made up of different numbers of winning cards. Unlike Texas Holdem poker, you have to play it with a set number of players. The most common version is played with 3 people – two who take on the role of the peasant, and one who takes on the role of the landlord. The landlord, fittingly, has slightly more cards (20), than the two peasants (who both have 17).
Its name comes from a period in Chinese history where landlords were considered to be evil characters, profiteering at the expense of the poor peasants. That being said, players at the start of the game have to bid to have the privilege of playing the role of the landlord. If you aren’t successful in that, or don’t even try to bid, you have to take the role of the peasant.
Though it started off in just one province of Hubei, it’s now wildly popular. Millions of players play the game on social media. There are tournaments in the real world too, with the winners claiming large pots and fame. If you go to China, and want to learn something different to your normal Texas Holdem poker game, be sure to learn the game of Fight the Landlord before you go.
For more information on this game and how it plays, please read the Wikipedia article on Dou dizhu
Poker chips are now almost always plastic with ridges in them to allow them to be stacked easily on top of each other. However, that wasn’t always the most popular material.
In the 19th century, poker games weren’t always played with chips. Stakes were raised often with material that had some intrinsic value like gold and so represented a certain amount of money. However, the need for standardisation in a game that was getting more and more popular was obvious. Hence the arrival of the commercially made poker chip whose value people could recognise from town to town.
The first poker chips used in Louisiana in the 19th century though were made of various materials and they were made from a mixture of all sorts of different things – like ivory, bone, wood for example – and a clay that held it together. Later on in the 19th century, those former materials were got rid of, leaving chips that were made purely from clay. That was the case until half way through the last century. From after the Second World War, you began to see other things mixed in with the clay to make the chips more durable. Nowadays you only see clay as part of a chip in casinos, and even then casinos often use a ceramic material for them. It is easier to print words and designs on a ceramic chip than it is on a clay one, so you can understand why they are popular. Clay composite chips are much more expensive and labour intensive to make than the plastic chips that are found everywhere else outside of casinos. This of course does not hold for people who play poker online! But for the purists and lovers of tradition – a clay chip is still the only way to go!
Why does the Ace of Spades often have the manufacturer’s logo on it?
In Texas Holdem poker, the suits have the same value as each other. So a straight flush 45678 of hearts has exactly the same ranking as the same hand in spades. In many card games though, the spades are the highest ranking suit. And therefore the Ace of spades is the highest ranking card out of the 52 standard ones in the deck. While this does not hold in Texas Holdem poker games, this is true in Bridge for example, one of the most popular card games in the English speaking world. It’s use in popular culture – songs, and the Second World War when soldiers put the card in the side of their helmets to indicate good luck – just carried on that perception. It’s the highest value card in many games, so you are lucky if you have been dealt it in the casino.
But the Ace of spades isn’t important for just that reason. It’s also the card that has traditionally carried the manufacturer’s logo on it. The reason for this goes back to the time of the reign of James 1st of England (who was also James 6th of Scotland) in the early 17th century. He introduced a new tax on playing cards, and decided that the Ace of spades should carry a logo showing the maker of the pack. This was proof that the tax had been paid. So it was lucky for both soldiers in the 20th century, and kings in the 17th!
Paul Phua may not have won the big prize at this year’s 11 million Euro first prize Monte Carlo One Drop, but he got a great second best. On the last day of the four day event – one of the richest on the poker calendar – Paul Phua won the €752,700 pot on Monday’s re-entry poker game. He beat a field of 12 other players around the poker table, coming out on top against Mikita Badziakouski from Belarus in a final heads-up battle. It’s Paul’s second biggest ever win in tournament play. At one stage in the game, Paul Phua sent professionals of the standard of Andrew Robl and Tom Marchese to the spectator rail after a three-way all in.
Over 11% of the poker tournament buy-ins go to charity – all the money raised goes directly to One Drop’s water-access projects. For more on what One Drop does – visit https://www.onedrop.org/en/.
Lots of fun was had at the Solaire casino in Manila on the 9th and 10th September 2016.
Some of the world’s best players came to play at the Triton Charity poker tournament with Tom Dwan, Daniel Cates, Paul Phua and friends among the buy ins. Great news was that many more poker players arrived than expected, meaning more money raised for charity.
17 players and 60 buy ins over the two days, saw Wai Kin Yong take the top prize of 6,155,600 HKD (ca. 800,000 USD), with Paul Phua coming a respectable third, claiming 2,572,000 HKD (330,000 USD).
Triton Poker donated 1,150,000 Philippine Pesos (ca 24,000 USD) to Project Pink Philippines, a support group for cancer patients and their families in the Philippines. To find out more about them, and to donate, visit http://www.projectpink.org.ph/
