The Persian Game of “As-Nas”

With the Middle Eastern game of as-nas we move outside of Europe as well as into that realm of card games about which there has been a lot of contention regarding their actual status as a “precursor” to poker.

I’m not going to delve too deeply into the debate here other than to note that references to as-nas don’t really turn up until the late 19th century -- that is, after poker had already established itself in North America in the early 1800s -- which obviously challenges the idea that poker borrowed from it.

Some as-nas decks date from around 1800 (just a little before poker), and a couple of writers of books about card games boldly declared it to be an early version of poker. But later…