One of the best parts of belonging to a niche community is the unique language that evolves within it. Poker, for example, has a rich vocabulary filled with insider terms that outsiders would find baffling. I doubt my own mother could tell you what a “flop” is—let alone grasp a phrase like “angle shooting.” Yet among the countless expressions born at the poker table, one stands above the rest for breaking into mainstream culture: the legendary “poker face.”
The phrase poker face is a phrase thrown around constantly to refer to keeping one’s emotions in check. Upon meeting someone with a stoic nature one might comment, “That’s quite a poker face you’ve got there.” In another instance one might say, “The boss can smell fear. If you go in there, You’d better have your poker face ready.” But where did the phrase come from? Has it existed since the dawn of poker or is it secretly a recent invention? I set out to track it down.
My first google searches were fruitless. I got all sorts of results defining the phrase and many more about the hit Lady Gaga song of the same name, but no one knew where it started. I started combing through encyclopedias looking for an entry on the phrase. “Poker” always had results, but no one had a story for the creation of “poker face.” Finally I resorted to a rare trick called using something I learned in college. I learned some years ago that the Oxford English Dictionary includes, among its vast wealth of information, a list of important places where a word or phrase has been quoted in publication. Usually, this includes the word’s first instance of publication. I searched for “poker face” and after following that trail for a bit, I finally came up with this:
It follows that the possession of a good poker face is an advantage. No one who has any pretensions to good play will betray the value of his hand by gesture, change of countenance, or any other symptom."Cavendish. Round Games at Cards. London: Thomas De La Rue & Co. 1875;From what I can tell, this quote marks the first recorded use of the phrase “poker face.” It appeared in a book on card games and gambling first published in 1875. While it’s possible the term circulated orally before making it to print, there’s no definitive evidence of that. Credit, therefore, goes to Cavendish—the mysterious author whose first name remains unknown.
Frankly, the whole book is quite interesting as it teaches what, at the time, must have been quite new to a lot of people. Moreover, I got a kick out of some of the older terms used. For example, while the author never calls it “Blackjack,” He does go into great detail about a French game called “Vingt-Et-Un” which translates to “21.” It is played nearly identically to modern Blackjack except that you bet after receiving your first card. It also appears as though a “full house” used to just be called a “full hand.” If you enjoy the history of our sport and want to check it out, can find the free version here, thanks to Google Books.
As to the rest of my questions, it seems the idea of the poker face came around a significant time later than the game itself. While it is very hard to pin down exactly when “Poker” became popular, card games of skill and betting have existed for hundreds of years previous to 1875.
The term “poker” entered the English language in the early 1800s, but its roots trace back much further. Games like Brag in England, Poque in France, and Pochen in Germany were already popular by the early 1700s, each centered on cards, betting, and skillful deception. These early games likely paved the way for modern poker. Naturally, bluffing—and the art of hiding one’s emotions—was essential long before the phrase “poker face” emerged, likely dating back at least 100 to 150 years earlier.