HIGH HAND (Gottlieb, 1973)
Playfield: Ed Krynsky
Art: Gordon Morison

Background
It's 1973. What did your beachfront arcade have in common with discount department stores, bus stations, your local Elks club, soda shops, and laundromats? Answer: you could almost always find a pinball machine there. Gottlieb tables were the most popular in the world, and distributors were always looking for new areas they could sell the games to. In my youth, there were a batch of cool places to play pinball at arms' length, but sometimes there were road trips where strange and different games could be found. One such venue was the old Two Guys discount deparment store in Brick, New Jersey, which was only sporadically visited by my family in the early 70's since there was a closer one in Neptune. The Two Guys was unique in that it had not only a department store but a supermarket as well, two separate areas demarcated by a commons area with vending machines (including an interesting vending machine that could generate lottery tickets for a new game called "Pick-It"), and a snack bar. At one point, this snack bar had three of the baddest-assed Gottliebs ever: "Out of Sight", "Top Card" and "High Hand". "High Hand" was the longest-in-the-tooth of these three tables, but it was certainly not ignored by the playing public. It seems that the pins were an unbelievably big draw at the Two Guys stores, and they chose very wisely when selecting them. 
     The second-most drops used on a Gottlieb table to that point (16) represented the aces and faces of a standard deck of cards, and these are tied into a rescorable bonus at a hole center stage, and on the outlanes, that can total 16,000 points. This was during the period where 15,000 points at the end of a ball was a big enough deal...now take that total and score it two, three, four or more times a ball...the usual feast-or-famine theme of many Gottliebs of this era works well here again.          

PLAYFIELD ITEMS

All Drop Targets (16): 500 points.

Bumper: 100 points, or 1000 when lit by completing all drop targets.

Hole: Scores bonus depending on how many targets are hit: 100 for each target in a bank (or 1000 if all four in a bank are down). Can score from 0 to 16,000 points. Can also score Special.

Rollovers (8): 100 or 1000 when lit. Completing target banks increases some rollover values.

Slingshots (6): 10 points.

Outlanes: Scores bonus as described above. Also, Special When Lit.

GAME RULES
Game starts with all 16 targets up. Knocking down a target adds 100 to the bonus count. Completing all four in a suit turns those 100s into 1000s. Completing all four suits lights the bumper, and Specials at hole and each outlane alternately.
