An Arizona town harked back to its Wild West past by deciding a deadlocked election with a deck of cards.
Thomas McGuire and Adam Trenk each won 660 votes in an election last month for a seat on the Cave Creek council.
A recount was considered too expensive and insufficiently entertaining.
Instead, town leaders invoked a 1925 local statute that calls for such eventualities to be settled by a game of chance.
Previous deadlocks have been decided by gunfights but the pair opted to draw cards instead.
At a ceremony at the local town hall on Monday, George Preston, Cave Creek's judge, selected a pack of cards from a stetson and shuffled it six times.
Mr McGuire, 64, a retired teacher who has served two terms on the council, drew the six of hearts.
He was beaten by Mr Trent, 25, a law student and newcomer to Cave Creek, who got the king of hearts.
"Originally, we thought of settling this with a paintball fight but that involves skill, and skill is not involved in this," said Vincent Francia, Cave Creek's mayor.
Mr McGuire, who moved to the town 10 years ago from suburban New York, said he knew Cave Creek was different when he went into a bar and found a horse inside.
In Japan, a game of scissors, paper, stone is occasionally used to settle an impasse.
Unable to decide himself, Takashi Hashiyama, a prominent industrialist, forced Sotheby's and Christie's to play the parlour game in 2005 to decide which should auction an £11 million art collection.
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