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Dead man's hand

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The dead man's hand-aces and eights.

The dead man's hand is a two-pair poker hand, namely "aces and eights." The hand gets its name due to 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, Rosa, says no contemporary citation for his hand has ever been found. 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."^[1] 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. (The 9 of diamonds is considered a toxic card in Contract Bridge, where it's known as "The Curse of Scotland".) For other poker hands that have found a place in lore, see Glossary of poker terms.

1 The hand in popular culture
2 See also
3 Notes
4 References
5 External links

The hand in popular culture

The hand on display at Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood

This ominous hand is sometimes used as a portent of death in songs, books and in movies that include

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)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (in Ken Kesey's novel McMurphy has a dead man's hands tattoo)
The collectible card game Doomtown defines a Dead Man's Hand as having the Jack of Diamonds as the fifth card. In this game, it is considered to outrank any other poker hand, unless an opponent plays the card "That's Two Pair!" to reduce its rank.
Aces and Eights, a 1936 movie.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Dick Tracy
Along Came a Spider
Dead Man's Hand is the seventh volume in the Wild Cards "shared universe" science fiction/superhero series.
Quantum Leap Season One, episode four, How the Tess was Won features a fixed hand of poker with the Dead Man's Hand being dealt out.
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.
Lucky Luke comics album, Calamity Jane, mentions dead man's hand.
In Blueberry comics album, Mister Blueberry, the hand is shown with no mention of its meaning. It hints that Blueberry is going to be shot later in the album.
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
Wing Commander II featured a poker game in which Spirit wins with the hand "full house, aces over eights". She dies in a mission shortly afterwards.
Similarly, Wing Commander IV featured a game of cards between Maniac and Vagabond. Maniac wins the hand with four queens, against Vagabound's hand, described as "full house, aces and eights". Shortly after, Vagabond is killed on an intelligence-gathering mission.
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.
American Soap Opera, General Hospital, had a storyline around the "Dead Man's Hand" which used the Jack of Diamonds as the fifth card, and had to deal with Bill Hickok. Character Sam McCall played by Kelly Monaco came to Port Charles in 2003 searching for the Dead Man's hand that belonged to her Grandfather, Sam McCall the man that shot Wild Bill. It was later discovered in 2006 that Sam McCall was a Cassidine and part of the McCall lineage by adoption only.
In the 2006 James Bond film, Casino Royale, one of the players in the final round of the big poker game is revealed to have had a full house, eights full of aces.
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.

Bob Dylan's 1962 song "Rambling Gambling Willie" shows the tradition in these lines:

It was late one evenin' during a poker game.

A man lost all his money; he said Willie was to blame.

He shot poor Willie through the head, which was a tragic fate.

When Willie's cards fell on the floor, they were aces backed with eights.

And, in the next verse:

So all you rovin' gamblers, wherever you might be,

The moral of this story is very plain to see.

Make your money while you can, before you have to stop,

For when you pull that dead man's hand, your gamblin' days are up.

Bob Seger's 1980 song "Fire Lake" make reference to the legend in these lines:

Who wants to play those eights and aces

Who wants a raise

Who needs a stake

Who wants to take that long shot gamble

And head out to fire lake

Blue Öyster Cult's song "I Am The Storm" refers to the Dead Man's Hand:

The cards you draw don't help at all

Hear the sound of approaching thunder

Nightmares, confusion will come true

Aces and eights are the fate that you drew

Motörhead mentions the hand in their 1980 song Ace of Spades in the final verse:

Pushing up the ante, I know you've got to see me,

Read 'em and weep, the Dead Man's Hand again,

I see it in your eyes, take one look and die,

The only thing you see, you know it's gonna be,

The Ace Of Spades

The Crown mentions the hand in their song "Dead Man's Song" (Deathrace King - 2000):

The cards are given, now place your bets with your soul at stake

But as a sinner you live to win, throwing the dice...

You get triple six and flash a gain of gold!

He's never lost before, but now he's been given the dead man's hand

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"), and Michael McDermott ("Aces and Eights"). In Nelson DeMille's novel The Charm School, the school in question is a Soviet prison camp for American military personnel missing in action forced to serve as role models for future spies, who live with them in a complete simulation of American everyday culture. The prisoners have secretly agreed among themselves on false customs they will teach in order to sabotage their students' future missions, and DeMille reveals this fact to the reader by describing a poker game where a two-pair hand has just been declared, and a prisoner misleads a student by inappropriately describing it as the dead man's hand. In Stephen R. Sobotka's Sin-City Walker series, the first novel Two of A Kind, portrays the protagonist vampire John Walker playing a game of poker. In the last hand played, he draws the dead-man's hand. One of his opponents - a superstitious man from Spain - runs away after seeing the aces and eights in John's hand. The Death Valley Days episode "A Gun Is Not a Gentleman," starring Carroll O'Connor, contains a reference to the hand; however, this is an anachronism, as the episode is set in 1859, about the duel between David Broderick and David S. Terry. In certain areas of the world "ace and 8" pocket cards are reffered to as an "Alan".