US presidents are often faced with high risk decisions based on imperfect information. While poker players may not be shaping foreign policy, the game they both play is much the same. That’s why it comes as no surprise that the vernacular of poker has found its way into our descriptions of world events: all-in; raise; fold; and bluff are all terms which would fit neatly into any account of a variety of current geopolitical crises.

But how many Commanders-in-Chief were card players themselves? As it turns out, quite a few. A recent New York Times article looks back on the history of the game in the White House, and has pieced together some of history’s greatest presidential poker anecdotes.

Pres. Harry Truman (pictured) and Warren Harding were both regular poker players. Harding even defied prohibition by convening a so-called “poker cabinet” twice a week, during which he and his advisors would drink bootleg whiskey and smoke cigars. One rumor has it that the president once gambled away some of the White House china.

Others used poker as a way to test the mettle of their appointees. Franklin Roosevelt was said to spread a nickel ante stud game, and “studied the players as much as he did the cards,” according to one participant.

Truman’s successor, Dwight Eisenhower, was reportedly something of a card shark. Although he dismissed the game as “unseemly for a president,” he won enough money to pay for his army dress uniform and an engagement ring for his future wife. In the end, Eisenhower quit the game because he felt bad for “taking so much of his fellow officers cash.”

Although he belonged to a society which opposed gambling, Richard Nixon (pictured, left) purportedly played a mean stud game. Legend has it that the former president raked in around $8,000 (approximately $100,000 today) while serving in the Navy. A keen observer of “tells,” Nixon once advised that “whoever’s talking the loudest is pretty sure to be bluffing.”

Truman made no secret of his love of the game, and favored a high-low variant which he dubbed Vinson, named after his Chief Justice Fred Vinson. The former Commander-in-Chief even had poker chips engraved with the presidential seal, and played under a sign sporting his famous slogan, “The Buck Stops Here,” a poker expression.

Once, while writing aboard the presidential train, Truman and his advisors sat down for a game against avid poker player Winston Churchill (pictured, right). “This man is cagey and is probably an excellent player,” Truman told them. “The reputation of American poker is at stake, and I expect every man to do his duty.”

Truman’s entourage wasn’t so sure: “Boss, this guy is a pigeon,” said Gen. Harry Vaughan. “If you want us to give it our best, we’ll have his underwear,” he boasted. When the late-night game had ended, the group had relieved Churchill of about $250. The very next day, the legendary Prime Minister made a speech proclaiming that an “Iron Curtain” had fallen over Europe.

During the Cold War, aides, strategists and reporters relished in using poker terminology. Eisenhower, for instance, “bluffed” his way to an armistice in the Korean War after deliberately hinting on compromised networks that he would soon use nuclear weapons in the conflict.

But the author gives the most credit to a president who never particularly enjoyed the game. “In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan (pictured) upped the ante against the Soviets by increasing defense spending in devising his strategic defensive initiative,” something he hoped would spur the Soviets pursue peace.

Mikhail Gorbachev responded by proposing that both countries destroy their nuclear arsenals, an event that brought the Cold War near a close. Secretary of State George Schultz declared the backroom dealings to be “the highest stakes poker game ever played.”

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