Welcome to today's deep dive. We are really glad
you're here with us to explore this one. Yeah,
we have a massive stack of notes today. We really
do. We're drawing from a really comprehensive
Wikipedia article today, plus various historical
records. Right. And it centers on a story that
completely challenges the conventional narrative
of the American Wild West. Oh, absolutely. The
mission for today's deep dive is to look way
beyond those Hollywood myths. You know, the dusty
cowboys and the cinematic shootouts. Exactly.
Yeah. Because what we're actually examining today
is a master class in survival, reinvention, and
personal branding. We are diving in. to the life
of Alice Ivers. Though history remembers her
by a much more intimidating name. Poker Alice.
It's just a remarkable narrative to dissect.
It really is. For you listening, whether you're
interested in how to navigate a heavily male
-dominated field or, you know, how to read a
room. Or even how to turn a severe disadvantage
into a regional empire. Spot on. Alice's life
serves as a phenomenal case study for all of
that. She really weaponized the expectations
of her gender to survive. In one of the harshest
environments imaginable. Okay, let's unpack this.
Because to really understand Poker Alice, you
have to look at where she started. Which is pretty
surprising. Right. It's about as far from a dusty
frontier saloon as you can possibly get. She
was born in Devonshire, England. In 1851. Right.
To Irish immigrant parents. And then when she
was 12 years old... Her family crossed the Atlantic
and moved to Virginia. And as a young woman,
she was sent to an elite boarding school in Virginia.
For the express purpose of becoming a quote -unquote
refined lady. Which is just a striking contrast
to where she ends up. It's night and day. Because
in her late teens, her family uproots again.
And this time they moved to Leadville, Colorado.
Yeah. And to put that into perspective for you,
the silver boom towns of the late 1800s were
total chaos. Leadville was a high altitude mining
camp that practically exploded overnight. It
was absolutely not a place for refined boarding
school etiquette. No, not at all. You had muddy
streets. Thousands of transient men, saloons
operating around the clock. Rampant disease,
too. Yeah, and just a general atmosphere of lawlessness.
It was rugged and overflowing with miners looking
to strike it rich. And it is in that chaotic
environment of Leadville that the first major
pivot of her life happens. She meets a young
mining engineer named Frank Duffield. And they
get married. Frank is a respectable guy, but
in his spare time, he likes to play amateur poker.
So he introduces Alice to the game. He teaches
her the mechanics, and at first, she just observes.
She's just watching the tables. Right. But then,
tragedy strikes. After only a few years of marriage,
Frank is killed in an accident. He was resetting
a dynamite charge in a Leadville mine. Which
is just awful. Suddenly, Alice is a young widow
on the frontier with - absolutely no financial
safety net. And this is where we see the concept
of survival economics come into play. A woman
in that era, in that specific frontier location.
She had very few avenues for independence. The
sources note she tried traditional women's jobs
first. Including teaching. Right, but she completely
failed to make a living wage doing that. Because
the frontier was built around male physical labor.
And the social structure dictated that women
were largely dependent on men for financial stability.
Traditional domestic or educational roles paid
pennies. She was in a dire financial position.
So she looks at the one marketable skill her
late husband left her with, and she pivots. She
turns to playing poker and pharaoh to support
herself. Wait, poker is one thing, but what exactly
is... Pharaoh? That is a great question. Like,
how does a boarding school graduate pick that
up and use it to make a living? That is a crucial
detail to her success. Pharaoh was actually the
most popular banking game in the Old West. Really?
Even more than poker? Even more so than poker
in a lot of saloons, yeah. It involves players
betting on the order in which cards will be drawn
from a dealing box. Okay, so it's a probability
game. Exactly. And the reason it suited Alice
so perfectly is that Unlike modern casino games,
Farrow is highly susceptible to card counting.
And tracking probability. Right. As cards are
dealt, a sharp player who can memorize the deck
knows exactly what cards are left and how the
odds shift. It requires a highly analytical,
mathematical mind. And she clearly had that mind.
Because she starts making a massive name for
herself in places like Silver City, New Mexico.
Winning huge amounts of cash. But the way she
uses that cash is what really stands out to me.
What's fascinating here is her overarching strategy.
She didn't just hoard her winnings. No, she did
something pretty wild with it. She would take
these massive pots from places like Silver City,
hop on a train, and travel all the way to New
York City. Just to go shopping. Literally. To
purchase the absolute latest, most expensive
fashions. We are talking high society Victorian
dresses. Hold on, though. Wearing high society
Victorian dresses in a rough mining camp feels
like it would make her a target, not a winner.
You would think so, right? What was the actual
strategy there? It was a highly calculated business
investment. And honestly, a form of psychological
warfare. By wearing these stunning, completely
out of place dresses to the poker games, she
completely disoriented her male opponents. Because
men in these camps expected women to either be
rough around the edges frontier workers. Or traditional
domestic wives. Exactly. A woman dressed like
she was attending a Manhattan gala sitting at
a Faro table threw them entirely off balance.
It made them underestimate her intellect while
simultaneously distracting them from the game
itself. She completely weaponized their gender
expectations. It makes perfect sense when you
frame it as a psychological tactic. She built
this incredibly specific personal brand. And
in her prime, she is working in a saloon in Creed,
Colorado. Which was actually owned by Robert
Ford. The man famous for killing Jesse James.
So she is rubbing shoulders with actual legends
of the West. And her persona is unforgettable
at this point. She's wearing these high fashion
dresses. She's constantly smoking cigars. And
she always carries a .38 caliber revolver. It's
the ultimate juxtaposition. But we have to remember
the core of her success. The mathematics of gambling
were entirely on her side. She was highly skilled
at counting cards and calculating odds on the
fly. In environments where men were often playing
based on gut instinct, ego, or liquid courage.
Mostly liquid courage, probably. But her ability
to remain emotionally detached and mentally track
the deck gave her a massive statistical advantage.
And the financials of her career really reflect
that advantage. Because of her reputation, she
started drawing huge crowds. Men were constantly
traveling just to challenge Poker Alice. On some
nights, she was pulling in up to $6 ,000. In
the late 1800s, that is a staggering sum of money.
She later claimed her lifetime winnings were
around $250 ,000. Which translates to over $3
million in... today's money. She essentially
operated as a one -woman corporation. And like
any smart corporation, she knew how to manage
her public relations perfectly. She was operating
in saloons, which were viewed as dens of absolute
sin by polite society. Yet she endeared herself
to the saloon owners by maintaining a strict,
almost contradictory set of respectable values.
The most prominent example from the historical
record is her strict refusal to play poker on
Sundays. That is quite the contradiction. Right.
She is gambling, smoking, cigars packing a gun
but sunday is the lord's day so she refuses to
deal it seems so contradictory but it was highly
strategic it allowed the saloon owners to point
to her and say hey look we run a respectable
establishment poker alice won't even deal on
a sunday it provided her with a layer of moral
armor in a profession that was deeply stigmatized
it was a performative boundary They kept her
in the good graces of the community. Here's where
it gets really interesting, though. Oh, her personal
life. Yes, because as much as she was a calculating
businesswoman, her personal life was just as
pragmatic as her poker game. Let's look at where
she ends up about a decade later. Around 1890
in Deadwood, South Dakota. Alice is working as
a dealer at Bedrock Tom's Saloon. And there is
a man working there named Warren G. Tubbs. He's
a painter and a dealer. One night, a drunken
miner... pulls a knife, and tries to attack Warren.
And Alice doesn't panic. Not at all. She pulls
out her .38 revolver, levels it at the miner,
and threatens him until he backs down. And that
specific incident sparks a romance, and she and
Warren get married. The historical records regarding
this marriage are actually quite a headache for
historians, though. They really are. The sources
offer very conflicting accounts of their family
structure. Some records claim Alice and Warren
had seven children together. But other sources
adamantly state they had no children together
at all. And that Alice actually brought a son
and a daughter into the marriage from a previous
relationship. Making them Warren's stepchildren.
There is actually a bizarre postscript to this
family tree decades down the line. Right. The
train track incident. A man named George, who
took the Tubbs name and was identified as her
son, is found lying on a set of train tracks
in 1934. And he is saved at the last second by
two women who pulled him to safety. He was 65
years old at the time of this incident, which
puts his birth around 1868. So the timeline of
her dependence is definitely complex. It is.
But bringing the focus back to Alice and Warren,
their story takes a difficult turn. Warren was
a painter by trade, and it's speculated that
the chemicals and conditions of his work led
him to contract tuberculosis. Alice spent years
desperately trying to nurse him back to health.
A few months before he dies, she moves him to
a ranch on the Moreau River. Which is about 100
miles from Sturgis, South Dakota. She was hoping
the fresh air would help him recover. But he
passes away on New Year's Eve, 1909. Now Alice
wants to give the man she loves a proper funeral
and burial. But it is the dead of winter in South
Dakota. So she wraps his body in blankets, places
him in their open lumber wagon, and hitches up
a team of horses. And she drives that wagon herself
for four days. Through snow -covered trails and
freezing temperatures just to get him to Sturgis.
A hundred -mile journey in an open lumber wagon
during a South Dakota January is a brutal physical
ordeal. It is a profound display of grit. And
when she finally arrives in Sturgis, she doesn't
even have the money to cover the funeral costs.
So she travels to Rapid City and takes a job
as a bartender at a place called Black Nell's
Resort. Specifically to pay off those burial
expenses. She eventually pays off the debt, but
she doesn't stay a grieving widow forever. Her
third marriage might be the ultimate example
of her cold, hard pragmatism. She eventually
meets a man named George Huggert. George? is
a worker on a sheep homestead she is running.
He is totally smitten with Alice and is constantly
proposing to her. But she keeps turning him down.
Until Alice falls behind on paying George his
wages. Eventually, she owes him $1 ,008 in back
pay. Alice calculates her options and realizes
it would literally be cheaper to marry the man
than to pay him the wages she owes. So she accepts
his proposal. If we connect this to the bigger
picture, it highlights how survival on the frontier
forced people to view romance and marriage through
a lens of strict financial utility. Love was
a luxury. Economic stability was a necessity.
Marrying your farmhand to cancel a debt sounds
incredibly cold to modern ears. But for poker,
Alice, who had already survived the death of
two husbands and the collapse of her finances.
It was just a practical ledger entry. George
Huckard passed away a few years later in 1924.
After paying off the funeral and running a sheep
homestead, Alice realizes that dealing cards
for other people or managing a small farm isn't
enough to secure her long -term future. She needs
to own the house. Which brings us to the final
and most explosive chapter of her life. She purchases
a building on the south side of Bear Butte Creek.
Right between Sturgis and Fort Meade. This place
became notoriously known as Poker Alice's Resort.
And it wasn't just a place for cards anymore.
She was running a brothel and selling bootleg
liquor. Operating an illicit business right outside
a military installation like Fort Meade changes
the dynamic entirely. You have a constant influx
of young soldiers looking for entertainment.
Which guarantees revenue, but it also guarantees
friction with military authorities and unruly
patrons. And that tension peaked in July of 1913.
The 1913 shootout. There had been brewing tension
between Alice and the soldiers of Troop K who
were stationed at the fort. On July 14th, around
1030 at night, five soldiers decide they are
going to go to Alice's resort and start what
the records call a roughhouse. Alice refuses
to let them in. So the soldiers escalate the
situation. They start throwing stones through
her windows. And crucially, they cut the telephone
and electric wires. They are systematically laying
siege to her property in the dark. Cutting the
communication and power lines is a totally predatory
move. But they vastly underestimated her resolve.
Alice grabs her weapon and opens fire into the
darkness, landing five shots. She hits one soldier,
Private Fred Kutzel, in the head. killing him
she shoots another 22 year old joseph c minor
in the chest the bullet passed just three inches
above his heart though he miraculously survived
she also struck three other people in the chaos
including a civilian the police and the sheriff
rushed to the scene alice and six of her workers
her quote unquote girls are arrested and thrown
in the county jail how does someone in 1913 shoot
and kill a federal soldier and not spend the
rest of their life in prison The legal fallout
is a perfect snapshot of frontier law. He looks
at the cut wires, the broken glass, and he makes
a definitive ruling. In that era and location,
the law prioritized property rights and self
-defense heavily. destroying private property
and cutting off a citizen's ability to call for
help. The frontier justice system sided with
the property owner. He determines she was acting
in self -defense, so she is clear of the shooting.
However, the law still had to penalize her for
the nature of her business. So she was officially
charged and convicted of keeping a house of ill
fame. And her six girls were convicted of frequenting
it. Exactly. The local authorities tolerated
her illicit businesses to an extent, but once
bodies hit the floor, They had to assert some
form of control. But getting locked up didn't
slow her down much. Not at all. Her twilight
years are a relentless string of run -ins with
the law. In 1915, there is another shootout at
her resort where two soldiers and a civilian
get shot. The police just write that one off
as a booze fight. In 1924, her place gets raided
for bootlegging. In 1925, she gets raided again
and convicted for operating a house of prostitution.
She is well into her 70s at this point, still
fighting the law. It eventually catches up to
her, though. By 1928, her luck runs out. She
is facing actual time in the state penitentiary
for her bootlegging and prostitution convictions.
Look, she's in very poor health, and prison time
would likely be a death sentence. This is where
we see the ultimate testament to the relationships
she built over decades. The local community doesn't
cast her out. Instead, hundreds of community
members come together and sign a petition. Sending
it to the governor of South Dakota, William J.
Bulo, requesting clemency. And it works. Governor
Bulo grants her a pardon on December 20th, 1928.
So what does this all mean? How do we synthesize
the legacy of a woman who was a refined boarding
school graduate, a card -counting math expert,
a widow who drove her husband's body through
the frozen wilderness, and a brothel owner who
shot soldiers in self -defense? Her end was as
uncompromising as her life. After the pardon,
she finally retired. On February 6, 1930, she
had to undergo a gallbladder operation in Rapid
City. Given her age, there was concern she wouldn't
survive the procedure. For a few days, she rallied,
but complications set in, and she passed away
on February 27, 1930. She was buried at St. Aloysius
Cemetery in Sturgis with a formal sermon given
by Father Columban of the Catholic Church. But
even in death, Poker Alice managed to dictate
the terms. The reading of her will is a defining
detail in her story. When it was opened, they
discovered she had completely disinherited her
relatives. Her stated reasoning was that they
had ignored her during her declining years. So
in one final act of agency, she left her entire
estate to her friends instead. Her legacy has
lived on in remarkably diverse ways. She really
became a fixture in pop culture. She was played
by Susan Sullivan in the TV film The New Maverick.
And by Elizabeth Taylor in a film literally titled
Poker Alice. She appears in a Lucky Luke comic
album alongside Calamity Jane. In the 1990s,
there was even an English indie rock band from
Stratford -upon -Avon that named themselves Poker
Alice. It is an enduring legacy because she defies
easy categorization. And this raises an important
question for you to think about as we wrap up.
We discussed how Alice strictly refused to play
poker on Sundays to maintain her respectable
image for the saloon owners. But looking back
at the totality of her life. The illegal resorts,
the bootlegging, the deadly shootouts. One has
to wonder, did maintaining those small, performative
boundaries of refined society actually serve
as the psychological armor that allowed her to
cross so many other severe legal lines without
losing her sense of self? Was refusing to deal
cards on Sunday the anchor that kept her from
completing? We hope this analysis provides you
with a new perspective on the figures who shaped
the frontier. And encourages you to keep exploring
the complex histories all around you. Until next
time.