Dead man's hand
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In poker, the dead man's hands are a category of two-pair hands, namely the "aces over eights" ones. The origin of the name is the five-card-draw hand held by Wild Bill Hickok at the time of his murder, which is accepted to have included the aces and eights of both of the black suits.
(In five-card games, this category of hands can be succinctly defined as two aces, two eights, and one card of a rank other than ace and eight. In seven-card games, a strict specification of aces over eights is more complicated: in permitting the existence of two pairs, a five-card hand as described also rules out any higher value. Among seven-card hands, as a contrasting example, any with two aces, two eights, and three cards with one other rank in common always provides both two pair and a full house, so a competent player would always set aside the eights and declare the full house; most players would probably thus not consider it a dead man's hand, any more than they would so consider a full house with aces and eights.)
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 due to him.
For other poker hands that have found a place in lore, see List of slang names for poker hands.
The hand in the rest of American culture
This ominous hand is sometimes used as a portent of death in songs, books and in movies that include
- 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 Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and
- Dick Tracy
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.
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.