Five of the Best Poker-Themed Rock Songs

Many things inspire rock songs; love, loss, betrayal, and desire. Throughout the years, a range of base
emotions have got songwriters inspired to strum their guitar and express their feelings.
Often, they do this through similes and metaphors, and one great vehicle for metaphors is poker. Poker
has acted as a metaphor for life in many instances, from film to music and even literature. The universal
appeal of poker lends itself to a rock song; it’s pointless using a game 99% of people don’t understand.
Of course, there are instances where the song does not use poker as a metaphor for life but takes the game literally and tells a poker story. These songs are rarer, but they’re out there, hiding as filler on your
favorite albums or sitting on the B-side of an old single.
To help you understand the use of poker in rock, we’ve brought together five songs with poker themes.
All are different in how they use poker, but all are enjoyable.

Ace of Spades – Motörhead

“NME ranks the Ace of Spades as one of the top 500 songs of all time, and in 2019 it was named the definitive poker-themed song by online provider Poker Stars. It is a song laden with poker-themed lyrics, including ‘push up the ante’, ‘the dead man’s hand’ and ‘I know you got to see me’, which makes it perhaps the most recognisable poker-themed rock song of all time.”

Aces and Eights – Uncle Kracker

“Ace of Spades mentions the dead man’s hand, and Twisted Brown Trucker band member Uncle Kracker goes one further. He was part of the Kid Rock stable of the late nineties who pursued a solo career, and on his first album, Double Wide, he sang about aces and eights. Aces and eights are the dead man’s hand, the final poker hand Will Bill Hickok held as he was gunned down in Deadwood, Dakota, in 1876. The song is all about luck, with the aces and eights referencing the luck Hickok had; his hand couldn’t save him from his fate.”

The Card Cheat – The Clash

“Hidden away on London Calling, ranked right here as the best album by punk band The Clash is a song
called The Card Cheat. The album takes a card game, presumed to be poker, that ends in death for a
cheating player. It fitted with the album’s themes championing the downtrodden and down-no-their-luck characters and was partly inspired by the poetry of Sylvia Plath. It is one of the (many) hidden gems on London Calling, a timeless album that every young musician should be forced to listen to.”

The Jack – ACDC

“The Jack is a classic example of using poker as a metaphor for something else. The lyrics feel poker-inspired, ‘she was holding a pair’, ‘she said she’d never had a full house’, and ‘poker face was her nature’. It feels like a poker song, but it isn’t. It’s actually a song about a lady of ill-repute the band encountered in the early seventies. They’ve rarely tried to hide the double meaning either, and for many, the poker references are now lost in the song’s real meaning.”

Deuces Are Wild – Aerosmith

“Deuces Are Wild is a love song, pure and simple. At the rawest level, the saying deuces are wild is a poker term; it usually means a two (deuce) in a poker game can mean anything; if you have three jacks and a two, technically, you’d have four-of-a-kind. Stephen Tyler is signing about the girl being full of surprises; in other words, whilst she appears to be doing one thing, she can do another. That is the appeal of deuces being wild in poker; a card looks like a two, but you don’t know what your opponent will designate it as.”