where did the term aces and eights come from
Dead man's hand 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.[1] 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".[2] Jacks and sevens are called the dead man's hand in the 1903 Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences.[3] Edmond Hoyle refers to it as Jacks and eights in 1907.[4]