First it was poker... Getting to the root

As the American frontier pushed westward, card games went right along with it. With little in the way of escape from the hard realities of those days, the pioneers entertained themselves with card games in every town across the country.

Card games were played around campfires, in bunkhouses, in saloons and on riverboats. Descending from the Spanish card game "Primero" and influenced by the French "Poque", poker as we know it took hold around 1850 with the introduction of the 52-card deck.

During that time to be a gambler was to be a gunslinger. Notorious outlaws would shoot a man dead over a card game as easily as throwing back a shot of whiskey. It is said that numerous men were killed in disagreements about who'd won a pot.

It was pokers rough and tumbles beginnings in the American West that gave rise to its reign today as the world's most popular card game. Considered the patriarch of modern poker and the person most responsible for its rise from smoky backrooms to the pop-culture spotlight was the leader of Texas Rounders Doyle Brunson.

Doyle in the words of The History Channel "cleaned Texas dry" playing high-stakes poker in the 1950s and '60s. Then, he eventually landed in Las Vegas where audiences would gather in awe to watch him lay. Today, at the ripe young age of 72, he continues to play at the elite level. In 2005, he won both his record 10th WSOP bracelet and hundreds of thousands more in tournament play.