Dead man's hand
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- For other poker hands that have found a place in lore, see Glossary of poker terms.
The dead man's hand is a two-pair poker hand, namely "aces and eights." The hand gets its name from the legend of it having been the five-card-draw hand held by Wild Bill Hickok at the time of his murder (August 2, 1876). It is accepted that the hand included the aces and eights of both of the black suits although his biographer, Joseph Rosa, says no contemporary citation for his hand has ever been found but the "accepted version is that the cards were the ace of spades, the ace of clubs, two black eights (clubs and spades), and either the jack of diamonds or the queen of diamonds as the "kicker".[1] The term, before the murder of Hickok, referred to a variety of hands. The earliest found reference to a "dead man's hand" is 1886, where it was described as "three jacks and a pair of tens."[2]
There are various claims as to the identity of Hickok's fifth card, and there is also some reason to believe that he had discarded one card, the draw was interrupted by the shooting, and he never got the fifth card he was due.
The Stardust in Las Vegas had a 5 of diamonds on display as the fifth card; in the HBO television series Deadwood, a 9 of diamonds is used; the modern town of Deadwood, South Dakota also uses the 9 of diamonds in displays; and Ripley's Believe it or Not shows a queen of clubs.
[edit] The hand in popular culture
This ominous hand is sometimes used as a portent of death in songs, books and in movies that include
- "Aces and eights" is the winning poker hand played by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) in the 1962 John Ford film "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," right before Valance goes out into the street for the gunfight with Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and Ton Doniphon (John Wayne); Valance is shot and killed by Doniphon.
- Dead Man's Hand is the name of a book in the Final Destination book series
- Stagecoach (where a doomed character held the ace of diamonds in place of one black ace, and the queen of hearts as fifth card)
- The Plainsman (where Gary Cooper as Hickok held the king of spades as the fifth card)
- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (in Ken Kesey's novel McMurphy has a dead man's hands tattoo)
- In the Deadlands roleplaying game, drawing a dead man's hand (with the Jack of Diamonds as the fifth card) when attempting to perform the Soul Blast hex kills the target instantly. In the collectible card game Doomtown , this hand outranks any other poker hand, unless an opponent plays the card "That's Two Pair!" to reduce its rank.
- Kenzer and Company currently publishes the Aces & Eights roleplaying game, a western-themed game with an alternate history of the United States of America and Mexico. (Released on June 20, 2007.)[3]
- Aces and Eights (film), a 1936 movie.
- Dead Man's Hand is the seventh volume in the Wild Cards "shared universe" science fiction/superhero series.
- The X-Files Season Three, episode four, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" has the title psychic, whose ability is to see the deaths of other people as well as his own, draw a full house, aces full of eights, while playing poker.
- A Party Poker ad shows a man playing poker against an opponent holding a dead man's hand with a Five of Diamonds as the fifth card. The camera then pans out to show that the setting is a morgue and the player holding the dead man's hand is a corpse
- Dead Man's Hand is the name of a first-person shooter for the Xbox and PC set in the American Old West, which features train trips and shoot-outs on horseback.
- The book Only Revolutions references the hand in the death of Wild Bill Hickok in its footnotes as "2 Aces, 2 Eights & Bill" (though it credits this as July 2, 1876 and not the correct date of August 2).
- American Soap Opera, General Hospital, had a storyline around the "Dead Man's Hand" which used the Jack of Diamonds as the fifth card.
- An epic ring named Deadman's Hand was added to the popular online game World of Warcraft as a part of its patch 2.3 in 2007.
- In Along Came a Spider with Morgan Freeman and Monica Potter it is how Jezzie's Father won the Shotgun
- In the recent Batman: RIP storyline by Grant Morrison, when Batman asks the Joker who the mysterious Black Glove is, the Joker deals him a dead man's hand. Batman later decodes this further, saying that since the eight letter of the alphabet is 'H', the hand is supposed to mean "H. A. H. A."
Songs featuring the poker hand include Bob Dylan's 1962 song "Rambling Gambling Willie", Bob Seger's 1980 song "Fire Lake", Blue Öyster Cult's song "I Am The Storm" Motörhead's Ace of Spades, and The Crown's "Dead Man's Song".
Musicians who have recorded entire songs based on the hand include Uncle Kracker (Aces & 8's"), Bill Caddick ("Eights and Aces"), Lita Ford ("Aces & Eights"), Michael McDermott ("Aces and Eights"), and Motörhead's ("Ace of Spades")
[edit] Notes
- ^ Wild Bill Hickok Gunfighter, by Joseph G. Rosa, page 163.
- ^ listserv.linguistlist.org discussion; Citation of the term in 1886 by the Grand Forks Daily Herald (July 3)
- ^ Aces & Eights Roleplaying Game.
[edit] References
- Rosa, Joseph. They Called Him Wild Bill. University of Oklahoma Press, 1979.
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