Speed in Weapon Acquisition: “The Poker Chip Draw” by Mark Hatmaker

Those of us who train weapons, whether that weapon be firearm, tactical folder, escrima stick, pepper-spray, or Viking battle-axe likely spend most of our time en garde, at port arms, or “Weapon-Ready.” In other words, our tool of choice is un-holstered, un-sheathed, un-pocketed, un-pursed, un-quivered and ready to go.


Our training is often drill-based or duel patterned, meaning all of the preliminaries have been assumed. Fake-words have been had, weapons are in hand, now we click the sticks 1-8, adjust the paper-target up or down range, slash-one/thrust-four for reps, or apply the centurion’s gladius to the post ad naseum.


But…


…in the New World, [Frontier America] a premium was placed not only prowess with a weapon at-the-ready but also speed of weapon acquisition and how quickly that weapon could be engaged tactically. In other words, we are not merely talking fast-draw, we are talking fast-draw and do the job.


Let us not assume the fast draw is mere stuff of Wild West legend or applies only to firearms, we have numerous accounts of rapid speed at blade-unsheathing, fiercely fast tomahawks drawn from belts, and arrows fired from hand with little preliminary.

There are countless American Indian children’s games [i.e., warrior games, as children were warriors in the making] that ensured speed of weapon acquisition straight into tactical use. 


Consider the following account…


October 1st, 1858, Indian Territory [later to be part of Southern Oklahoma] Major Earl Van Dorn is leading a retaliatory raid against a band of Comanche and Kiowa. At one point in the melee Van Dorn becomes separated from his men and sees two warriors riding double. Van Dorn fires and kills the horse beneath them. According to Van Dorn the two warriors hit the ground, rolled and came up with bows in hand, each unloosing an arrow immediately.


“My first wound was in the left arm. The arrow entered just above the wrist, passed between the two bones and stopped near the elbow. The second was in my body; the arrow entered opposite the ninth rib on the right side, passed though the upper portion of the stomach, cut my left lung and passed out on the left side between the sixth and seventh rib.” [Major Van Dorn, from a letter to his wife.]


Major Van Dorn was saved by suppressing fire from his arriving sergeant and thusly lived to relate this feat of agility under a falling flailing animal directly into precisely targeted tactical advantage.


There is a huge variety of “games” [drills] that were used to develop this speed-of-acquisition skill, today we’ll take a close look at just one. 


And this “game” can be played with your weapon choice. I mean, after all, you can carry the biggest gun in the land, the sharpest blade on two coasts, the toughest stick in the jungle, but if you can’t get to it when you need it, it’s the same as carrying nothing.

Perhaps, worse than nothing, as it’s been mere luggage you’ve toted around and sunk hours into duel drilling to no effect.


The Poker Chip Draw


The below is just one iteration of a kind of beat-the-drop drill you can find throughout the historical record, but this is one of the most entertaining descriptions of it, in my opinion.


This is “Dutch” Henry Ziplinsky explaining “how it’s done” to Eugene Cunningham, sometime before 1934.


“For practice, there’s nothing better than the so-called poker chip draw. Hang your gun to fit your arm. Now, take a poker chip and put it on the back of your gun-hand. Hold the gun-hand out at shoulder level. Turn the wrist deliberately to let the poker chip drop—and pull your gun as if somebody were pulling to kill you! See if you can get it out, cocked, up to horizontal, and pointed—as you’d point your forefinger—at the target, and a shot loosed. All before the chip hits the floor.”


If, you are working with a firearm, dry-firing this drill is recommended to ensure the safety of those around you and your own foot. 


There is an absolutely ingenious old-timers’ dry-fire drill that can be added on to the Poker Chip Draw that will prove if you could have got the shot off into the target or not. [Black Box Crew, I’ll save that one for you exclusively in a volume coming early in 2024. Again, it builds speed, accuracy, provides immediate target feedback, and saves ammo cost. It’s simply ingenious.]


Again, don’t tunnel on firearms. Run this drill through any weapon you regularly work in duel fashion. I work it with six-gun, lever-action rifle, Bowie knife, and tomahawk all to useful effect. 


Back to “Dutch” Ziplinsky.

Mr. Curry

“It will be some time before you can loose one shot ahead of the rap of the chip on the floor. But practice will make you amazingly fast and accurate. Harvey Logan (Kid Curry) of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch could click out three shots to beat the chip. Whatever luck you have with the stunt, your draw will be improved marvelously. That falling chip is something to compete with. It keeps you at high tension.”


[BTW-Kid Curry spent a mighty interesting short-time in my hometown of Knoxville. We’ll cover that another day.]


Again, weapon prowess is to be sought for, it is to be admired, but it often seems that speed-of-acquisition gets a bit of short shrift. 


The Poker Chip Draw allows us to bring that bit of initial tactical advantage up to speed literally and make a mighty fine game of it while you’re at it.


[For techniques, tactics, and strategies of Rough and Tumble Combat & Indigenous Ability culled from the historical record see the Black Box Brotherhood Subscription Service.]