Dead man's hand
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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 being 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 the black suits; although his biographer, Joseph Rosa, says no contemporary citation for his hand has been found, 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. Saloon no. 10 in Deadwood, South Dakota, the saloon in which Wild Bill Hickock was shot while holding the infamous "dead man's hand," shows the fifth card as the 9 of diamonds. At least two of John Ford's films feature the aces and eights hand as a foreshadowing of death. In Stagecoach (1939), the hand is held by Luke Plummer (Tom Tyler), soon to be shot by the Ringo Kid (John Wayne) while in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Liberty Valance draws the hand just prior to his death.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ 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)
[edit] Further reading
- Rosa, Joseph G. (1979). They Called Him Wild Bill: The Life and Adventures of James Butler Hickok. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0806112174.
