Breihan, the cards were retrieved from the floor by a man named Neil Christy, who then passed them on to his son. Īccording to a book by Western historian Carl W.

Hickok's final hand purportedly included the aces and eights of both black suits.

What is currently considered the dead man's hand card combination received its notoriety from a legend that it was the five-card stud or five-card draw hand, held by James Butler Hickok (better known as 'Wild Bill' Hickok) when he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall on August 2, 1876, in Nuttal & Mann's Saloon, Deadwood, Dakota Territory. The 1907 edition of Hoyle's Games refers to the hand as jacks and eights. Jacks and sevens are called the dead man's hand in the 1903 Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences. The earliest detailed reference to it was 1886, where it was described as a ' full house consisting of three jacks and a pair of tens'. The expression, 'dead man's hand', appears to have had some currency in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, although no one connected it to Hickok until the 1920s. Author Frank Wilstach's 1926 book, Wild Bill Hickok: The Prince of Pistoleers, led to the popular modern held conception of the poker hand's contents.

No contemporaneous source, however, records the exact cards he held when killed. The pair of aces and eights, along with an unknown hole card, were reportedly held by Old West folk hero, lawman, and gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok when he was murdered while playing a game. Currently, it is described as a two-pair poker hand consisting of the black aces and black eights. The makeup of poker's dead man's hand has varied through the years. The card hand purportedly held by Wild Bill Hickok at the time of his death: black aces and eights For the blackjack strategy, see Aces and eights (blackjack).

Poker table ace of spades