ABOUT VIDEO POKER HISTORY - Page 2
The Birth of the Video poker game is very interesting
since it resembles to the present day playing of online
internet video poker games. The exact origins of poker are
often debated and no precise answers exist. Furthermore
there are no clear explanations as to how the game
initially was created.
Sittman and Pitt of Brooklyn manufactured the first
version of Poker playing machines in 1891. That time it
was popular as Poker Card Machines. By the year 1896, it
became very popular and its existence could be felt in
almost all the 3,117 licensed liquor establishments.
The machines maintained their enormous popularity until
just before World War I. They would experience occasional
resurgences in popularity until the 1980s when Video Poker
mania struck.
Most of the early models, called drop card machines,
employed 50 cards on 5 drums, two cards short of a
complete deck. Usually the cards missing were the Jack of
Hearts and the Ten of Spades, cutting the possibility of a
Royal Flush in half. Cards could also be rearranged on the
reels to further reduce wins. Award cards were often
printed on both sides with separate pay schedules for free
drinks and cigars. Upon inserting a nickel and pushing the
handle lever, the drums would spin and flip the cards. A
winning hand could pay up to 100 cigars or drinks for a
Royal Flush, 40 for a Straight Flush, and lesser awards
for a pair of Kings or better.
In the year of 1896, Cigar dealer Charles Leonhardt,
the junior along with a New York company formed the
Monarch Card Machine. They also incorporated two of the
most popular game of that period in that machine which
brought it immense popularity. The Monarch Brownie was the
first machine to utilize a front bottom window to display
all nickels played, and to hold the last one in sight. The
latter feature was incorporated to discourage the use of
counterfeit coins, a scourge that had menaced the industry
since it's inception.
Pioneer slot manufacturer, inventor and operator,
Charles August Fey, was an intimate participant in the
first half-century of the industry. His three-reel Liberty
Bell, built in 1899, was the forerunner of more than a
million bell slot machines that would be manufactured over
the next half century.
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