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
Chinese poker Each player then has to divide their cards into three poker hands (known as "setting"): two containing five cards each (known as "the middle" and "the back"), and one containing three cards ("the front"); "the back" must be the highest-ranking hand, and "the front", the lowest-ranking hand (note that straights and flushes do not count in the three-card hand). The "back hand" is placed face down on the table in front of the player, then the "middle hand" is placed face down in front of the back hand, and the front hand is placed face down in front of the