Poker & Pop Culture: Professor Henry T. Winterblossom Does the Math

Appearing not long after Robert C. Schenck’s modest pamphlet-turned-book explaining the rules of draw poker came another slim volume, one that can rightly be regarded as the earliest formal poker strategy title. Published in 1875, The Game of Draw-Poker, Mathematically Illustrated by Henry T. Winterblossom not only provided 19th-century poker players a thorough explanation of the game’s odds and probabilities, but affords us a glimpse of the cultural standing of poker at the time it was written.

The mere publication of a book of poker strategy announces the game had already begun to be distinguished from other gambling games as one that rewarded close study and was not wholly subject to the whims of chance. That said, the author of The Game of Draw-Poker is especially cautious to avoid suggesting poker is not gambling, and thus recommends the game should be looked upon warily as a potential danger both to the individual and to society as a whole.

Poker: A Growing National Threat

First, a quick word about Winterblossom, described on the title page as a “Professor of Mathematics.”

Around the time of the publication of The Game of Draw-Poker there appeared a short article in The New York Times titled “The National Game” that described poker’s growing popularity with some trepidation. After noting that baseball had been the generally agreed-upon “national game,” the article’s author worriedly wonders if perhaps another game is about to wrestle away the title.

“We should be sorry,” writes the author, “to see such an active and heathful sport exchanged for a game of cards. But if we are to judge anything from a new variety of literature that is spreading through the newspapers, we are forced to the conclusion that the national game is not base-ball, but poker.”

Fears about poker’s spread are next articulated, with the NYT expressing a wish the game would remain confined to “the rough South-west and to those far-off regions where the Outcasts of Poker Flat are real personages” — a reference to the popular 1869 short story by Bret Harte we’ve already discussed.

The author discusses some poker-related strategy articles that had begun to appear in newspapers of the day, then also includes the publication of The Game of Draw-Poker as reason for further concern, noting incidentally that the “author, by the way, is understood to veil himself modestly under a pseudonym; and he is said to be a member of the Lotos Club.”

The Lotos Club was a literary club founded in 1870 in New York City whose membership included many of the era’s most famous artists, writers, journalists, and critics. Named after the famous Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem “The Lotos-Eaters,” one of its earliest members, Mark Twain, gave the club an informal, poker-related second game — the “Ace of Clubs.” (Twain, you’ll recall, himself wrote a memorable poker story involving a fictional professor — “The Professor’s Yarn.”)

Even so, the club’s constitution specifically prohibited “the games of poker, loo, and others known as round games” from the “amusements” permitted in the club house.

The NYT writer fears the spread of poker and its recent promotion as “the national game” may be indicative of an impending moral decline in America. He finishes with reference how our friend Robert Schenck was still denying having authored his book which as we discussed last week had been originally published without consent. (Schenck would eventually own up to it in 1880.)

No wonder, then, that the author of The Game of Draw-Poker had wanted to hide behind an assumed name. Poker was thought by many to be a danger and a threat, which meant even a sober analysis of the game’s mathematical truths could be construed as destructive.

Study Poker Strategy and Lessen Its Danger

The complete title of Winterblossom’s book sounds as though it were designed to appeal primarily to a certain, analytically inclined segment of the poker-playing crowd: The Game of Draw-Poker, Mathematically Illustrated; Being a Complete Treatise on the Game, Giving the Prospective Value of Each Hand Before and After the Draw, and the True Method of Discarding and Drawing, With a Thorough Analysis and Insight of the Game as Played at the Present Day by Gentlemen.

Despite that long title, the book itself is short — just 72 pages filled by a preface and …

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