Initially played by Persian nobility as a training exercise for cavalry units, polo eventually spread to other parts of the world.

Valuable for training cavalry, the game was played from Constantinople, where Emperor Theodosius II constructed a polo ground early in the 5th century,[14] to Japan by the Middle Ages.

A tzykanisterion (stadium for playing tzykanion, the Byzantine name for polo) was built by Emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–450) inside the Great Palace of Constantinople.

[20] The game spread to South Asia where it has had a strong presence in the northwestern areas of present-day Pakistan (including Gilgit, Chitral, Hunza, and Baltistan) since at least the 15th to the 16th centuries.

[21] Qutubuddin Aibak (r. 1206–1210), originally a Turkic slave who later founded the Mamluk dynasty (1206–1290) Delhi Sultanate, was accidentally killed during a game of polo when his horse fell and he was impaled on the pommel of his saddle.

[22] According to The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, the popularity of polo in Tang China was "bolstered, no doubt, by the presence of the Sasanian court in exile".

A European polo club was established in the town of Silchar in Assam, India, in 1859, the English tea planters having learnt it from Manipuri incomers.

Later, according to Cheitharol Kumbaba, a royal chronicle of King Kangba, who ruled Manipur much earlier than Nongda Lairen Pakhangba (33 CE) introduced sagol kangjei ('kangjei on horseback').

The game's governing body in the United Kingdom is the Hurlingham Polo Association, which drew up the first set of formal British rules in 1874, many of which are still in existence.

The game was slow and methodical, with little passing between players and few set plays that required specific movements by participants without the ball.

Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and English immigrants in the Argentine pampas started practising polo during their free time, and eventually some of them began to put together games.

Among them, David Shennan is credited with having organised the first formal polo game of the country in 1875, at Estancia El Negrete, located in Buenos Aires Province.

The sport spread quickly among the skillful gauchos, and several clubs opened in the following years in the towns of Venado Tuerto, Cañada de Gómez, Quilmes, Flores and later (1888) Hurlingham.

The high season typically aligns with the Argentine summer, from November to March, when the weather is warm and ideal for outdoor events.

Conversely, the low season falls in the winter months, from May to September, when activities slow down, allowing fields and players a period of rest and maintenance.

James Gordon Bennett Jr. on 16 May 1876 organised what was billed as the first polo match in the United States at Dickel's Riding Academy at 39th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City.

By the time the article came out on 2 June, the Denison Club had already received a letter from Bennett indicating the challenge was offered before the "first" games in New York.

[44] There is an urban legend that the first game of polo in America was played in Boerne, Texas, at retired British officer Captain Glynn Turquand's famous Balcones Ranch.

[46] During the early part of the 20th century, under the leadership of Harry Payne Whitney, polo changed to become a high-speed sport in the United States, differing from the game in England, where it involved short passes to move the ball towards the opposition's goal.

Whitney and his teammates used the fast break, sending long passes downfield to riders who had broken away from the pack at a full gallop.

They are trained to be handled with one hand on the reins, and to respond to the rider's leg and weight cues for moving forward, turning and stopping.

A well trained horse will carry its rider smoothly and swiftly to the ball and can account for 60 to 75 percent of the player's skill and net worth to their team.

[citation needed] The polo mallet consists of a cane shaft with a rubber-wrapped grip, a webbed thong, called a sling, for wrapping around the thumb, and a wooden cigar-shaped head.

Polo is played professionally in many countries, notably Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Iran, India, New Zealand, Mexico, Pakistan, Jamaica, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and is now an active sport in 77 countries.

More recently, Janek Gazecki and Australian professional Jack "Ruki" Baillieu have organised polo matches in parks "around metropolitan Australia, backed by wealthy sponsors.

There are five polo clubs in Iran: Ghasr-e Firoozeh, Nowroozabad, Army Ground Forces, Kanoon-e Chogan and Nesf-e Jahan.

These variants are considered sports separate from standard polo because of the differences in the composition of teams, equipment, rules, game facilities, and so on.

Non-equine variations include: A lighthearted variant, hobby horse polo (German: Steckenpferdpolo), was devised in 1998 in south western Germany.

[84] "At Denison Monday evening while Messers Harold Gooch and Will Lowe were practicing at the game of polo, quite a serious accident happened to former.

Mr. Gooch's saddle turned throwing him into the ground when his horse gave him a severe kick, cutting a gash about five inches long across his head over the right ear.