One of the most common questions ever to be posed to poker players is what their favorite hand is. This is largely a redundant question, as the winning player either answers with the best pre-flop hand, “pocket aces” or responds with reference to importance, replying “the winning hand”.
Barely anyone will ever say the ‘Dead Man’s Hand’.
Who Was ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok?
James Butler Hickok, known as Wild Bill Hickok, was born in 1837. Across a wild and varied existence, Hickok’s life almost represented the age of the United States in which he lived, with his life on the American frontiers as a soldier, lawman, cattle rustler and eventually a gambling gunslinger one of legend.
Hickok was a farm boy in his early years but was drawn into a world of crime on horseback, fighting for the Union Army, working as a scout, a gunman and even an actor in his wild and varied life. Hickok was not at the centre of a web like ‘Poker Alice’ but more like the bullet in the gun of 1800s America, constantly shot forward into unfamiliar times, adapting to his surroundings with each new undiscovered frontier.
Like Poker Alice, Hickok had English ancestry. His father, William Hickok died when Will Bill was just ‘James’ and aged only 15. Three years later, Wild Bill fought with Charles Hudson and as the two teenagers fell into a canal, both believed the other to have died when they surfaced. Fleeing, Hickok joined The Jayhawkers, Jim Lane’s Free State Army and fought against slavery, meeting Buffalo Bill along the way.
As he travelled with the army, he was nicknamed ‘Duck Bill’ for his long nose and protuberant lips, before then being given the moniker ‘Shanghai Bill’ by his fellow soldiers due to his vast height and slim figure. After killing outlaw David Colbert McCanles and several members of his gang at a Pony Express station in Nebraska, Hickok, who had grown a moustache, was nicknamed ‘Wild Bill’ and the name stuck for the rest of his life.
The Birth of Quick Draw
Hickok, who escaped justice for the shooting by claiming self defense, said he was only defending the Pony Station owner. While this led to Hickok keeping his freedom, he sought out McCanles’ widow and offered her all the money in his possession by way of apology. Serving as a wagon master, working as a brigade member and even helping the local police marshal, Hickok looked to have assumed a role with responsibility, but this flew in the face of statements at the time on ‘Wild Bill’. He was, according to some locals, “By nature a ruffian, a drunken, swaggering fellow, who delighted… to frighten nervous men and timid women.”
Wild Bill had a rougher reputation than being a lawman and wasn’t afraid to get into a fight to the death. While travelling through Springfield, Wild Bill and a local gambler called David Tutt had a disagreement over an unpaid debt and a local lady who both men were infatuated by. After losing his pocket watch to Tutt playing poker, Wild Bill asked his rival not to wear it and when he saw him in the town square showing off the timepiece, challenged him to a draw.
To a gathering crowd, Wild Bill and Tutt faced off and separated by 75 meters, performed the first-ever ‘quick draw’ duel in the Wild West. Tutt got a shot off first, but from such a distance, missed his target. Wild Bill had dodged death by just a few inches and didn’t miss, being much more accurate. Hickok shot his enemy through the heart, killing him almost instantly.
Tutt cried out, “Boys, I’m killed!” as he sank to the ground and died.
Marshall Bill Takes Down Coe
“Do any of you fellows want the rest of these bullets?”
Having seen off his nemesis in the Springfield town square, Wild Bill Hickok was never afraid of a head-on scrap. The mayor of Abilene, Theophilus Little, wrote in 1911 about a ‘vile character’ called Phil Coe, and how Wild Bill got him.
“Coe ran the Bull’s Head, a saloon and gambling den, sold whiskey and men’s souls. Wild Bill incurred Coe’s hatred and he vowed to secure the death of the marshal. Not having the courage to do it himself, he one day filled about 200 cowboys with whiskey hoping that they would get to shooting and in the melee shoot the marshal [Wild Bill].”
Sadly for Coe, he had reckoned without Hickok’s legendary abilities with a firearm.
“Will Bill had learned of the scheme and had his two pistols drawn on Coe. Just as he pulled the trigger, one of the policemen rushed around the corner between Coe and the pistols and both balls entered his body, killing him instantly. In an instant, [Bill] pulled the triggers again sending two bullets into Coe’s abdomen and whirling with his two guns drawn on the drunken crowd of cowboys, said ‘Now do any of you fellows want the rest of these bullets?’”
Of course, no-one dared say a word.
Wild Bill Hickok was a wild character in a gunfight and he struck a fearsome figure in the street but according to all notable accounts, he was a loving husband to his wife Agnes having married her when he was 39 years old in 1876. Some claimed that Calamity Jane, a.k.a. Martha Jane Cannary, was his original wife but no documents have even proven that statement or either backed or disproven Jane’s own comments that she let Bill go so that he could marry Agnes.
The Dead Man’s Hand Plays Out
“The old duffer. He broke me on the hand.”
It was on the first day of August in 1876 that Hickok was playing a cash game of five card draw at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, Dakota. According to legend, a drunken man called Jack McCall was losing heavily when he got up and staggered clear of the table. Hickok purportedly offered to buy McCall breakfast and said he should quit the game until he was able to sustain his actions at the felt.
The following day, Hickok – who locals were rumored to wish to take over as marshal – was back at the same table and won a pot with aces and eights. After winning the hand, Hickok was said to have turned to a fellow player and said: “The old duffer. He broke me on the hand.”
Counting his chips, Hickok had his back to the door when McCall entered the saloon and shot Hickok in the back of the head with his Colt .45-caliber revolver, killing him instantly while shouting “Damn you!”
The bullet passed through Hickok’s head and as the former lawman slumped to the felt dead, struck fellow player Massie in the left wrist. For many years, the exact contents of the hand that fell to the floor face down was a mystery. As Hickok’s assassin was captured and tried, it wasn’t deemed important but in the years after Hickok’s death, the hand took on a fabled fame that warranted investigation.
At McCall’s trial, the reason for him shooting Hickok was rumored to be his being hired by local gamblers that didn’t like Wild Bill’s success at the felt and local influence. Whatever the reason, just over six months later, Jack McCall was hanged and buried in a Roman Catholic cemetery.
When the cemetery was moved four years later, McCall’s body was exhumed. The noose was still tied around his neck.
What Was the ‘Other Card’?
Popular legends align on both the aces and eights in the hand being black, i.e. one being in clubs and the other in spades. The fifth card, however, has been a matter of debate for many years. According to a publication in 1926, some 50 years after Hickok’s death, the hand of aces and eights were established but Hickok biographer Joseph rosa researched further details many years later.
“The accepted version is that the cards were the ace of spades, the ace of clubs, two black eights, and the queen of clubs as the kicker card.” He wrote.
Western historian Carl W. Breihan disagreed, however, claiming that the cards were picked up from the floor and kept by a Mr. Neil Christy, who passed the Dead Man’s Hand onto his son. Mr. Christy junior then informed Breihan that the other card was in a different suit.
“Here is an exact identity of these cards as told to me by Christy’s son,” he wrote. “The ace of diamonds with a heel mark on it; the ace of clubs; the two black eights, clubs and spades, and the queen of hearts with a small drop of Hickok’s blood on it.”
The Legacy of Wild Bill Hickok
“We will meet again in the happy hunting ground to part no more.”
After Wild Bill Hickok’s death in Deadwood, Black Hills in August, 1876, he was buried at Charlie Utter’s Camp, and the entire town came out to witness the ceremony. Utter committed Hickok to the Earth with a wooden grave marker reading:
“Wild Bill, J. B. Hickock [sic] killed by the assassin Jack McCall in Deadwood, Black Hills, August 2, 1876. Pard, we will meet again in the happy hunting ground to part no more. Good bye, Colorado Charlie, C. H. Utter.”
Wild Bill Hickok was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame upon its inception in 1979 and is one of three Poker Hall of Famers to die while playing the game along with Jack ‘Treetop’ Straus and Tom Abdo.
In 2004, some 128 years after his death, Wild Bill Hickok’s death was played out on television for the umpteenth but possibly best time, with the poker and gambling legend played by Keith Carradine.
