As Nas
A centuries-old Persian card game, played with a 20 or 25-card deck among five players, that many gaming historians point to as a possible influence on poker's hand rankings and betting structure.
Coming soon — not yet playable
Rules
As Nas is traditionally played with a specialized deck of 20 or 25 cards (five ranks across four or five suits, rather than a standard 52-card deck), typically among exactly five players, with each player dealt five cards.
Players bet in rounds on the strength of their hand, with the option to raise, call, or fold — a structure gaming historians frequently note as strikingly similar to the betting and bluffing mechanics later seen in Poque, Brag, and modern poker. Hand rankings in As Nas are based on the specialized deck's five ranks, roughly analogous to five-of-a-kind, four-of-a-kind, full house, three-of-a-kind, and pairs, since the deck's limited rank set makes straights and flushes (in the modern sense) impossible.
Historical and cultural note: the theory that As Nas is a direct ancestor of poker (popularized in some 19th and 20th century accounts of American soldiers or traders encountering it in Persia) is now considered unproven and disputed by many card-game historians — the resemblance may be coincidental convergent evolution rather than direct lineage, since equally strong cases exist for Poque and Primero as poker's ancestors. As Nas is included here as a genuine, well-documented traditional game in its own right, not as settled proof of poker's origin.
Strategy notes: Because the deck uses only five ranks, hand-strength reasoning is much simpler than in standard poker — pairs and higher-order matching combinations dominate, and reading opponents' confidence in the betting rounds carries even more relative weight than card strength alone.
Common house rules
Standard deck substitution
Lacking a traditional As Nas deck, most home tables substitute a standard 52-card deck stripped down to five ranks (e.g., 10 through Ace) to approximate the reduced rank set, though this changes suit distribution from the traditional game.
Exactly five players, traditionally
As Nas is traditionally built around exactly five players and five-card hands from a matching deck size; adapting it for a different table size changes the game's balance meaningfully.
Present the ancestry claim as disputed
When explaining this game at the table, it's worth noting that its status as poker's direct ancestor is a popular but unproven and actively disputed theory, not settled history — treat it as one of several candidate influences alongside Poque and Primero.
Related games
Based on shared category, origin, and rules that reference each other.
Poque
The 17th-18th century French bluffing and betting game most often credited as the direct namesake and ancestor of the English word 'poker.'
Learn the rules →Primero
A Renaissance-era Spanish card game — one of the oldest documented ancestors of poker, in which players compete to form the best of several fixed hand types from four cards.
Learn the rules →Ambigu
A French vying game first recorded in 1659 under Louis XIV, blending elements of Whist, Bouillotte, and Piquet, with hand categories that closely parallel modern poker rankings.
Learn the rules →Basset
A 17th-century Italian banking game, brought to fashionable prominence at the French court, in which players bet on cards turning up from the banker's deck — a direct ancestor of Faro.
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