Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet on Everything

Titanic Thompson, born Alvin Clarence Thomas, has been the subject of a few books over the years as well as a long expose in Sports Illustrated, so I went into Kevin Cook’s latest effort of cataloguing the legends of the perhaps the most famous gambler in world history wondering what point of view Cook would approach the text with: It seems there either the skeptics or the true believers when it comes to the deeds of Titanic Thompson.

Cook mainly falls into the latter category, but thanks to a ton of research on his part he has done a terrific job of separating the facts from the fiction, and indicating where a small leap of faith is required.

 The one story of Titanic Thompson that always bothered me was how he won a fishing pole as a boy by throwing rocks marked with an X in the lake and having his dog retrieve one of them -for the whole story you’ll need to read the book-honestly this just seems like a 10 year-old thief’s way of explaining how he came home with a new fishing pole, and I suspect many of the more outlandish Thompson stories fall into the same category.

Undoubtedly almost all of the tales have grown over the years, both in terms of Thompson’s execution of them as well as the size of the wagers, but there are enough eye witnesses to verify that Titanic Thompson was a Houdini-like performer, but unlike Houdini, Thompson used his “tricks” as proposition bets.

Of all the Titanic Thompson books and articles I have read Cook’s was by far the most interesting (even better than Jon Bradshaw’s prose in his book Fast Company) and more importantly the most credible, as Cook obviously did his research for the book.

Clocking in at about 234 pages Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet on Everything is a pretty detailed account of Titanic’s life, and Cook does an excellent job of putting the different eras of Thompson’s life into perspective by listing and explaining outside events that were happening at the time.

Anyone who is a fan of poker, gambling, or golfing will absolutely love this book, and will likely recount the tales of the man known as Titanic to their poker and golf buddies -some more enterprising individuals may even try a few of Ti’s easier cons.

For someone who led one of the most interesting lives in the history of the United States, in addition to being one of the famous people in America in his heyday, it’s almost astonishing how few people today have even heard the name Titanic Thompson. From being the model for Damon Runyan’s Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls; to running with likes of Runyan, Arnold Rothstein, Nick “The Greek” Dandalos, Johnny Moss, Minnesota Fats, Lee Trevino, Raymond Floyd, and a slew of other golf Hall of Famers; Titanic Thompson should be as well known as the ship that was the catalyst for his nickname.