And still no other old saw manages to sum it up quite so well. It’s become the most rote of cliches: they don’t make ‘em like they used to.

As I said, this guy's life reads like a story. Highly recommended for fans of history or historical fiction. My favorite was when he swindled Al Capone. There are so many interesting stories in this book. 'Sergeant Thomas spent hours dealing demonstration stud hands, providing a running commentary on each hand, training his men to calculate the odds of an opponent's having an ace or king or deuce in the hole, telling them when to bet harder and when to fold their tents, so they could beat all the poor dumb soldiers who trusted to luck.' pg 53 When he was drafted into the army, he was made a sergeant and taught the men under him how to gamble. Alvin was slim like a willow, and he didn't walk, he sauntered.' pg 21 'He took his hat off when he spoke to you. He was quite popular with the ladies and married 5 times to women significantly younger than him. Thompson developed a method of marking cards that some still use today, like putting dots on the back or notching the edges to be able to tell a face cards from the lower ones. 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.

Doyle brunson talks poker after dark