High Hand

High Hand, manufactured by Bally in September 1935, is an early battery-operated electro-mechanical pinball machine from the first decade of the coin-op pinball industry. A novelty-play game offering 5 balls for 5 cents, it brought a poker theme to the playfield at a time when playing-card motifs were becoming popular with manufacturers.

The game's central conceit is simple and clever: at the start of each game a poker hand is indicated on a circular wheel at the bottom of the playfield, and the player tries to land balls in the game's 22 trap holes to build a higher hand than the one shown. Two ball kickers add unpredictability to the action. Notably, the trap holes contain no switches, so all score totaling is done visually by the player, and although the instruction card promised replays to successful players, the machine itself had no replay mechanism; any awards would have been paid out by the location. The manufacturer supplied printed cards supporting either a points or replay award system.

As one of Bally's earliest poker-themed games, High Hand is an interesting artifact from the formative years of pinball, when manufacturers were still experimenting with how skill, chance, and award systems fit together.