No Founding Father was more responsible for America's independence and the democratic government that followed than John Adams. His contribution was at least equal to that of Washington or Jefferson.

The second President of the United States descended from America's original risk-takers, the Puritans. John Adams' family arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638, nearly a century before he was born. He always considered himself an American.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States, played politics like a game of poker. He was aggressive, cunning and always played to win.

Growing up in the vast Hill Country of south central Texas, Lyndon learned both games - politics and poker - from his father, Sam Johnson, a five term state legislator. There were nine children in the family. At the dinner table "serious issues", politics and government, were the conversation.

Dwight D. Eisenhower learned to play poker from an old frontiersman when he was a boy in Abilene, Kansas. Born in 1890, the small town where he grew up had been a notorious wide-open cattle town just a generation earlier.

Young Ike befriended one old-timer who'd been a scout, hunter and professional gambler. He was "my hero-a great teacher," Eisenhower said. On frequent outings, he taught him to hunt, fish, pilot a flatboat, and "the rudiments of poker."