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Aces and eights

The dead man's hand is two pair, aces and eights, usually shown as the black aces and the black eights. It's the hand Wild Bill Hickok is said to have held when he was shot from behind at a poker table in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, on August 2, 1876. Nobody knows his fifth card.

Nobody wrote the hand down at the time, either: the aces and eights first appear in print fifty years later. Below, what is known and what isn't, how good the hand really is, and a showdown to play.

First lesson · 6 min The cards What happened How good is it? FAQ

The hand

Ace of spades, ace of clubs, eight of spades, eight of clubs. The fifth card is the one part of the legend that never settled.

The fifth card

Versions that go around: the nine of diamonds, which is the one on display in Deadwood today; the queen of clubs; the queen of hearts; the jack of diamonds. None of them comes from 1876.

What happened in Deadwood

A gold camp in the Black Hills in the summer of 1876, on land that by treaty belonged to the Sioux, with no legal government of its own.

  1. August 2, 1876

    Hickok, 39, is playing poker in Nuttall & Mann's saloon, later known as Saloon No. 10, with Carl Mann, Charles Rich and Captain Massie, a former Missouri River pilot. For once he sits with his back to an open door.

  2. That afternoon

    Jack McCall, known around town as Broken Nose Jack, walks up behind him and shoots him in the back of the head.

  3. Soon after

    A miners' court, a trial with no legal standing, acquits McCall.

  4. March 1, 1877

    Arrested again, tried in federal court in Yankton, the territorial capital, and convicted, McCall is hanged.

  5. 1879

    Hickok's body is moved to Mount Moriah Cemetery, above Deadwood. The saloon burns in the town's great fire the same year; the Saloon No. 10 on Main Street today stands on a different spot.

Where the aces and eights come from

The cards are the least documented part of the story. Here is the paper trail, in order.

  1. 1886

    The phrase already exists, for other hands. Its first known use in print, in the Boston Daily Globe, calls three jacks and a pair of tens the dead man's hand.

  2. 1888

    Aces and eights get the name too, in a Kansas newspaper. Over the next years it also goes to jacks and eights and to jacks and sevens.

  3. 1915

    Harry Young, the bartender who saw the shooting, publishes his memoir. He describes the game and the players, and says nothing about the cards.

  4. 1926

    Frank J. Wilstach's biography quotes a letter from Doc Peirce, who laid out the body: Bill's hand read aces and eights, two pair. It names no suits. This is the first known link between the hand and Hickok.

How good is aces and eights?

Good, not great, and nothing like rare. Two pair is the eighth of the ten poker hands. The hand is famous for the story, not for the cards.

  1. 01 Royal flush
  2. 02 Straight flush
  3. 03 Four of a kind
  4. 04 Full house
  5. 05 Flush
  6. 06 Straight
  7. 07 Three of a kind
  8. 08 Two pair
  9. 09 One pair
  10. 10 High card
five-card deals is two pair
1 in 21
of the hands one opponent can be dealt are worse than aces and eights
97%
chance, at a four-player table, that someone else is dealt a better hand before the draw
9%
chance to make a full house drawing one card: 4 of the 47 unseen cards
8.5%

Any three of a kind beats it, three deuces included. And those four exact cards, the black aces and black eights with any fifth card that isn't an ace or an eight, turn up once in 59,067 five-card deals. In Texas Hold'em, with seven cards to choose from, two pair or better shows up in 38.8% of hands, so it's an everyday hand.

Four hands at the showdown

Put them in order, best first, then open the answer. It's a made-up showdown, not the 1876 one, built to test the two things that decide two pair.

  • Hand A

    A A 8 8 4

  • Hand B

    2 2 2 K 7

  • Hand C

    K K Q Q J

  • Hand D

    A A 5 5 9
Show the order
  1. 1 2 2 2 K 7 Hand B. Three deuces. Any three of a kind beats any two pair.
  2. 2 A A 8 8 4 Hand A. Aces and eights. Same top pair as hand D, so the second pair decides: eights beat fives.
  3. 3 A A 5 5 9 Hand D. Aces and fives.
  4. 4 K K Q Q J Hand C. Kings and queens. Two pair is ranked by its higher pair first, and aces beat kings, whatever the second pair.

In music and on screen

  • Deadwood, HBO (2004 to 2006)

    Hickok's death is in the fourth episode of the first season, "Here Was a Man," first aired April 11, 2004.

  • Bob Dylan, "Rambling, Gambling Willie" (1962)

    A ballad of a gambler shot at the table, whose cards "were aces backed with eights."

  • Motörhead, "Ace of Spades" (1980)

    The song name-checks "the dead man's hand," without spelling out which cards it is.

Dead man's hand FAQ

What is the dead man's hand in poker?

Two pair, aces and eights, usually shown as the black aces and black eights. It's the hand Wild Bill Hickok is said to have been holding when he was shot dead in Deadwood on August 2, 1876.

What was the fifth card in the dead man's hand?

Nobody knows. The nine of diamonds, the queen of clubs, the queen of hearts and the jack of diamonds have all been named, but no source from 1876 records the hand at all.

Why is it called the dead man's hand?

Because of Hickok, in the version everyone knows. But the phrase is older: it was in print by 1886 for other hands, and by 1888 for aces and eights. The link to Hickok first appears in a 1926 biography.

What game was Wild Bill Hickok playing?

Poker, but nobody recorded which kind. Five-card draw was the classic game of the time, and aces and eights is a five-card hand, but the witnesses didn't say.

Is aces and eights a good poker hand?

In five-card poker, yes: it beats about 97% of the hands one opponent can be dealt. But it's only two pair, the eighth of the ten hands, and any three of a kind beats it. In Texas Hold'em it's far more ordinary.

Keep going

The ranking Poker hand rankings All ten hands, how often each one comes up and how ties are broken. The classic Five-card draw The old saloon game: five cards each, one draw, two betting rounds. Quick reference Who wins in poker Fifteen tiebreakers settled in two lines: kickers, split pots and suits.

Two pair, and everything before it

Aces and eights is two pair, and the course gets to two pair in path 2, “My cards and everyone's”. Before that it builds a hand from nothing: the cards, the chips, the betting and who acts when.

First lesson · 6 min The cards Every card has two facts: rank and suit. You'll learn to read both, and which one says which card is worth more. Play now

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