Deadwood: Comparing The Lead Characters And Their Real World Counterparts

While there is no historical figure named Joanie Stubbs in the real life Deadwood there was a woman gambler named Alice Tubbs. "Poker'' Alice appears to be the main inspiration for the character played by Kim Dickens. Poker Alice was an English lady who came out west as a teenager when her family moved to Leadville, Colorado attempting to capitalize on the silver rush.

Alice learned poker by watching her first husband Frank play. When Frank was killed in a mining accident Alice was left with few choices for income. Leadville had no school, so she couldn't teach, and she wasn't so desperate as to sell her "womanly wares'' to the miners (unlike the character of Joanie Stubbs), so Alice took to cleaning up at the poker table as both a player and a dealer. Alice made her way to Deadwood in the 1890s where she eventually married Warren Tubbs.

Although the "Bella Union'' was a real Deadwood establishment, it was a theater and not a saloon or gambling house. So, "Poker" Alice was never employed there. Widowed yet again, she relocated to Sturgis, South Dakota, and began to run her own "house of ill repute" which she closed on Sundays in religious deference (she also ostensibly never gambled on Sundays) and allowed it to be used for Sunday School.

This is probably what influenced the series' storyline where Joanie repurposed the Chez Amis for the education of the youth in Deadwood.