He spent hours sitting alone in his room, teaching himself to adeptly shuffle cards, practicing dealing from the bottom of the deck more quickly than the eye could follow. Later in life, Thompson said he couldn’t read, but numbers and odds always made sense to him. The last name, Thompson, that he would adopt for most of his adult life, came from a later newspaper misprint that he embraced as his own. 'He sinks everybody.' pg 3Īlvin Clarence Thomas was born in 1893 in rural Missouri near the small town of Monett. 'I don't rightly know but it ought to be 'Titanic,'' Clark said. Seriously folks, history doesn't get much more interesting than this.Īs Alvin collected his winnings, someone asked Snow Clark the stranger's name. In addition to all of the fun anecdotes about bets he made, Titanic was a star witness in the trial for the murder of the man accused of 'fixing' the World Series. According to author Kevin Cook, Titanic's life was the model for the gambler Sky Masterson in the musical 'Guys and Dolls.' This poker and golf-playing phenomenon bet and propositioned his way across the country. 'Because I am.' Prologue.Ī non-fiction biography that reads like fiction, this is the life story of Titanic Thompson.
