Presidential Candidates Playing Poker

Still dealing with pre-Civil War poker during this week’s installment of “Poker & Pop Culture” over on PokerNews.

With this one I share some details from an entertaining early poker story told by the English actor Joe Cowell in his memoirs. The book was published in 1844, and the story he tells concerns his being introduced to poker aboard a steamboat back in 1829.

The story is fairly diverting, though it’s a digressive reference to Henry Clay by Cowell that I mostly focus on in the article. Cowell repeats the idea that the Kentucky politician actually invented poker. It’s an entirely spurious claim although still interesting given the fact that Clay was running for president (the fourth of…