Published on Apr 25, 2014 by Brent Abrahamson
The Dead Man’s Hand
Do you play poker? Those that do are familiar with the various poker hands such as straight flush, royal flush, full house and so on. But do you know about aces and eights? That’s known as the dead man’s hand, and there’s quite a story as to how it got its name.
J. B. Kendall, the reporter covering the American West for “The London Times” brings us the details.
It started when Kendall arrived in Deadwood. Here he met some of Deadwood’s notorious citizens including Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
Southbridge Old Time Radio brings you the rest of the story with the Frontier Gentleman episode first broadcast on April 20, 1958, titled “Aces and Eights.”
What can ya say, they were honest back then for the most part. 🙂 Yea they spoke their mind they did – something ya got to be careful of now days around the ptb little people – and yes TPTB are the little ones/people if they deserve the tag of “people” as I don`t think they are anymore than a bunch of slimey bottom crawlin` slugs at best description of TPTB.
I read the book a long time ago – and I was in Deadwood back in the late ’80’s – the number 10 saloon, the graveyard, etc – really interesting – cracked me up that there has been a long held argument with historians about the last card – seems most all agree that both pair (aces and eights) were black (clubs and spades) but the fifth card? quite a few say the 10 of hearts, or the seven of diamonds – much more than 50% concede that it was red and not little (2,3 or 4?) or a face card –
anyway; Thanks digger, this was kinda neat