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Poker & Pop Culture: Always Be Wary When W.C. Fields is Dealing

When it comes to iconic images of poker in popular culture, right alongside Cassius M. Coolidge's "Dogs Playing Poker" and Wild Bill Hickok's "dead man's hand" is the one of the great comic performer and early film star W.C. Fields steathily peering out from under a stovepipe hat over a carefully-protected poker hand.

There's a certain irony in the image, however. While Fields is the one looking wary, his opponents are really the ones who ought to be suspicious. After all, whenever any of Fields' characters played poker, it was pretty much a given the game would be crooked.