What’s a “Dead Man’s Hand”?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

How are you doing?

This is Artie from New Bern.

Hi, Artie from New Bern, New Bern, North Carolina.

Correct.

Welcome to the show, Artie.

What’s on your mind?

I was wondering why they say aces and eights are a dead man’s hand when you’re playing cards, because I’ve always played cards and I never died when I had that hand.

Well, that’s good.

That’s good.

Yeah, here you are with us.

You don’t sound dead.

So why do we call a pair of aces and a pair of eights a dead man’s hand in poker?

Well, there’s some wild stories connected to this, and a couple of legends seem to have collided.

But I think I can untangle these for you if you want to hear this.

A lot of folks immediately think of Wild Bill Hickok.

Wild Bill was supposedly killed at a poker table in 1876 in Deadwood in the Dakota Territory.

And the legend has it that the poker hand he was holding was two pair, a pair of aces and a pair of eights when he was shot in the back.

And the legend goes that supposedly that’s where we get the expression dead man’s hand.

Most people who play poker today will say that it means aces and eights, usually the black suits.

However, it looks like it’s just a legend because for one thing, there are no contemporary records from the time, 1876, at all about what hand he was holding.

We have some stories from later of people who were souvenir hunting or making myths or doing get-rich storytelling, trying to make a buck off of telling stories they invented about the cards or producing cards supposedly from the scene that they were trying to sell for a lot of money.

And the two pair story about aces and eights doesn’t appear until more than 50 years after Wild Bill died.

The story appears in 1926.

That’s a long time between his death and for the story of the aces and eights to show up.

And for another thing, Dead Man’s Hand has referred to a lot of different cards.

It has referred to any two pair or three jacks and a pair of tens or full jacks and red sevens or red eights and a wide variety of other hands.

So even if it was about Wild Bill’s cards, why would they change?

So it’s probably not about Wild Bill Hickok, even though the legend is pretty nice and it’d be cool if it was about Wild Bill.

Oh, now I learned something. Thank you.

Yeah, but usually these days it means two black aces and two black eights.

It’s nice talking to you. I learned something.

Thanks, Artie. Don’t spend too much at the tables, all right?

Okay. Have a nice weekend.

You too. Be well.

Bye, Artie.

Well, we’ll be your Huckleberry. Give us a call at 877-929-9673. Email us at words@waywordradio.org.