Dead man's hand Dead man's hand The dead man's hand is a nickname for a particular poker hand, popularly a two-pair of black aces and black eights, although definitions of the hand have varied through the years. Such a hand is said to have been held by Old West folk hero, lawman, and gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok when he was murdered. No contemporaneous source records this hand's exact cards, but Frank Wilstach's 1926 book "Wild Bill Hickok: The Prince of Pistoleers" led to the popular modern conception of the "dead man's hand" as containing pairs of black aces and black eights. In Hickok's
Poker probability and 3♦ 7♣ 8♦ Q♥ A♥ are not identical hands when just ignoring suit assignments because one hand has three suits, while the other hand has only two—that difference could affect the relative value of each hand when there are more cards to come. However, even though the hands are not identical from that perspective, they still form equivalent poker hands because each hand is an A-Q-8-7-3 high card hand. There are 7,462 distinct poker hands. In some popular variations of poker such as Texas Hold 'Em, a player uses the best five-card poker hand out of seven cards. The