Month: May 2022

In 1926, the biography of James Butler ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok reported that the man dubbed ‘The Prince of Pistoleers’ died while holding the ace of spades, ace of clubs, eight of spades, eight of clubs and another, unconfirmed card in a hand of five-card stud poker. In fact, Hickok had shot in back of the head by disgruntled rival, Jack McCall, at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory fifty years earlier; no contemporary accounts describe the exact hand Hickok was holding at the time of his death, but two black aces and two black eights has ‘officially’ been known as a ‘dead man’s hand’ ever since. Of course, even after his death, legends and tales about Hickok continued to appear in pulp fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so it is, perhaps, understandable that his name also became associated a term that had already existed for some time.

Nevertheless, several reliable references to a ‘dead man’s hand’ date from the period between Hickok’s death in 1876 and the publication of his biography in 1926, but make no mention of Hickok. A newspaper article dating from 1886 recounted the tale of a down-on-his-luck Illinois judge who staked his livelihood on his full house, jacks over tens, lost to another full house, queens over tens, and died of shock. Later reliable accounts, in the early years of the twentieth century, linked the term ‘dead man’s hand’ to jacks and sevens or jacks and eights.

 

In formal card games, such as those played in casinos, a ‘burn card’ is a card dealt from the top of the deck stub, but discarded, or ‘burned’, unseen and unused by the players. Burning a card before each round of betting is intended as a deterrent against illegally altering playing cards, by bending, nicking or otherwise marking them, so that their value and suit can be determined without seeing the face of the card.

In poker variants, such as Texas Hold’em and Omaha Hold’em, that use community cards, knowledge of the next community card is obviously extremely valuable. Consequently, before dealing the flop, turn and river the dealer deals a burn card, face down, next to the discard pile, or ‘muck’. Even in the event of marked cards, players cannot see the next community card until immediately before it is dealt, so have little or no time to take advantage of any markings. Without a burn card before each round of betting, a marked card could be lying, in plain view, at the top of the deck stub for the whole of the previous round, allowing players ‘in the know’ an unfair advantage over their fellow competitors and/or the house.

Of course, in a modern casino, any attempt at card marking is unlikely and, unless highly sophisticated, will probably be discovered sooner rather than later in any case. Nevertheless, burn cards are retained in bricks-and-mortar casinos as a matter of custom or tradition.

Authentic casino chips or, in other words, casino chips manufactured to the standard of those used in Las Vegas, are typically made from clay or ceramic. That said, so-called ‘clay’ casino chips rarely, if ever, consist of 100% clay, but rather a composite of clay and other materials, such as chalk or sand. Likewise, so-called ‘ceramic’ casino chips are actually made from plastic or resin, which creates the ‘look and feel’ of ceramic, but contain no clay.

The processes involved in the manufacture of authentic casino chips is a closely-guarded trade secret and, because they can be exchanged for currency, casino chips, a.k.a. ‘checks’ or ‘cheques’, are subject to stringent security measures. Of course, what we do know about authentic casino chips is that they are labour-intensive, and therefore relatively expensive, to manufacture.

This is especially true in the case of clay chips, which are created by compression moulding or, in other words, squeezing materials into a preheated mould and applying heat and pressure to bind them together. Clay chips have a round, recessed centre, often inlaid with a graphics label, surrounded by mouldings of various designs. Notably, any contrasting lines or spots around the edges of clay chips are created not by painting, but by replacing the original base material with a different colour before moulding. By contrast, ceramic casino chips are produced by injection moulding – that is, producing injecting molten material into a mould – to create a completely flat surface, which can be printed with large, high-quality graphics.