August 22, 2024 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Titanic Thompson led a wild life, always chasing the next big score, including cheating the infamous mobster Al Capone. Here’s The History Guy with the story of Titanic Thompson, the greatest cheat of all time.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories, and our next story comes
to us from a man who's simply known as the
History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands
of people of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy
has also heard here in our American Stories. Here's the
History Guy with the story of Titanic Thompson, the greatest
(00:31):
cheat of all time.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
A gambler once bet al Capone that he could throw
a limon all the way to the top of a
five story building in a single throw. After Capone took
that crazy bet, the man walked up to a street
vendor and picked up a limon and went to throw it,
but sensing that this might be some sort of trick,
Capone instead picked up his own lemon, squeezed all the
juice out of it, handed it to the man and said,
no throw this unfazed, the man took a long running
(00:56):
jump and threw as hard as he could, and, to
al capone shock, the leomon went all the way to
the top of the building and landed on the roof.
What Capone didn't know is that that gambler had already
palmed the squished fruit that Capone had given him and
had instead thrown a lemon that was full of buckshot
that he had placed on the vendor earlier in preparation
for his outrageous bet. That gambler was a man named
(01:19):
Alvin Thomas, but he went by the name Titanic Thompson,
and among the people of his profession, he was truly
a titan The history of who is perhaps the world's
greatest wagerer deserves to be remembered. Alan Clarence Thomas was
born in eighteen ninety three in rural Missouri, near the
(01:39):
small town of Monnet. The last name Thompson that he
we adopted most of his adult life came from a
later newspaper missprint that he embraced as his own. According
to the family history, his father was gambling the night
Alvin was born and didn't see his new son until
he came home the next day. Apparently, his father couldn't
handle the new responsibilities that came with having a child,
so he took whatever cash he could find a house
(02:00):
and left. Alvin's mother didn't spend time bemoaning her fate.
She quickly remarried and ensured Alvin had a roof over
his head. Thomas's new stepfather wasn't particularly fond of the boy,
but taught him how to play cards and roll dice.
Alvin took to the games far more quickly than he
absorbed anything else. Later in life, Thompson said he couldn't read,
but numbers and odds always made sense to him. He
(02:22):
spent hours sitting alone in his room teaching himself to
a deptly shuffle cards, practicing dealing from the bottom of
the deck more quickly than the I could follow. Thompson
developed his own method of marking cards by putting spots
on the back or bending the edges.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
To be able to tell face cards by feel.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
He practiced throwing playing cards into a hat over and
over again, or tossing dice, figuring out how to hold
them and make them land like he wanted. Thompson would
write down the results of his dice throws, calculating odds
and combinations, long before others considered gambling a science of sorts,
but he wanted more than science. Thompson strove to elevate
gambling to an art form. He practiced shit jumping and
(03:00):
other simple skills like throwing coins into a cuff to
the point where his execution of them made him seem extraordinary.
According to Kevin Cook, author of the book Titanic, Thompson
the man who bet on everything. Thompson said, if a
thing's hard to do, most folks are too lazy to
do it. That puts me one up on them. Alvin
left home at the age of sixteen. He only had
(03:22):
fifty cents to his name, but he wasn't worried. He
would always say I've been broke, but never for more
than six hours at a time.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
He promised his mother that.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
He wouldn't drink or smoke, and he kept those promises,
although he engaged to numerous other vices. When he was
in high stakes games, he would drink water or milk
while the other high rollers were dulling their senses with alcohol,
and that was just fine by him. In Mandit, Thompson
discovered a man selling maps on the street. He offered
to sell maps for a percentage of the money, and
soon was wondering door to door selling maps. When the
(03:53):
luster wore off that job, Thompson joined a sharpshooter named
Captain Adam Henry Bogertis and has Bogartists miracle medicine. Thompson
wowed Bogatis with his shooting abilities, and together they built
roll Americans out of their money with promises of medicine
that could cure almost anything that was wrong.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
With you, from gout to crossed eyes.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
In actuality, the medicine was a mix of cocaine and alcohol,
which probably gave people bursts of energy if nothing else.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Thompson drew attention to the show by.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Bragging he could shoot a silver dollar out of the
air with one shot. The trick was to substitute a
real silver dollar with a pre punctured one and throw
it in the air while pulling the trigger. Thompson was
already able to palm adims like a pro, and fooled
audiences with the trick. After he left the Traveling Medicine Show,
Thompson began Chris costing the country, looking for games and
offering unsuspecting people propositions that he was certain to win.
(04:44):
It was in a pool haul in jop On, Missouri,
in nineteen twelve that Thompson added the Titanic to his name.
He just won a couple of hundred dollars off of
a local pool player when on his way out the door,
he read a sign offering two hundred dollars to the
person who could jump over the pool table without touching it.
Thompson announced to the room that he'd take the bat.
He walked out and returned later with a mattress that
(05:05):
he positioned on the other side of the pool table. Then,
taking a running start, he threw himself over the table
head first and landed on the mattress on the other side,
without touching the table and collecting on the bat. An
onlooker asked what the gambler's name was, and, according to legend,
another replied, it must be Titanic because he sings everybody.
Thompson had dedication and skill, but he wasn't above shifting
(05:28):
the odds with a bit of guile. Once he heard
of a skilled horseshoe pitcher named Frank Jackson who bragged
that he would bet any amount on a game of horseshoes.
Thompson saw opportunity, but there was a problem. He'd never
played horseshoes. He practiced in practice until he was ready.
He baited Jackson by telling some kids he could beat
anyone at horseshoes. As he planned, Jackson showed up after
(05:50):
he heard of the boast. Thompson offered to play for
ten dollars, but Jackson bulk, saying he played for real money,
so Thompson offered to play for ten thousand dollars. It
was all the money I have and flashing of water bills.
The hook was set. They played, and Thompson ringed three
in a row while Jackson's throws kept coming up a
foot short. Jackson lost ten thousand dollars, wondering why his
(06:14):
throws were so weak that day. Apparently, Jackson never found
out that Thompson had set the stakes forty one feet apart,
a foot more than the forty foot regulation. More serious
trouble found Thompson when he killed a man with a
hammer in nineteen ten. It had been a good night
for Thompson before the killing. He had won a river
bow through gambling and was playing craps on that same
(06:35):
boat with Jim Johnson. Thompson's girlfriend, Nelly, was with him
as he won role after roll, Johnson, drunken out of sorts,
accused Thompson of cheating and threw him overboard into the
dark river. By the time Thompson climbed back on the boat,
Johnson had torn Nelly's clothes in multiple places and was
threatening to take out his frustrations with Thompson on her.
(06:55):
Thompson was having none of it. He beat Johnson about
the head with a hammer and through the enco just
man into the river, where he drowned. The local sheriff
showed up to sort up the trouble and offered Thompson
a choice. He'd either come to jail and face charges
of murder, or give the sheriff the boat and get
out of town. Thompson gave up his boat and left.
The four other men Thompson would kill during his lifetime,
(07:17):
he claimed were trying to rob him.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
He got off every time.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Perhaps it was this early violent experience on the river
that convinced Thompson that women had no place on the
road with him, But throughout his life Thompson refused to
take any of his five wives on his travels. Thompson
preferred his wives to be young and beautiful, even in
his later years. His first marriage to eighteen year old
Nora Trushel ended in divorce when he refused to get
a normal job, to spend time at home with her,
(07:44):
or to stop seeing other women while on the road.
Alice Kane, his second wife, was a con man's kindred spirit.
Thompson said he met black haired Alice when she tried
to pick his pocket in Pittsburgh. She was seventeen years
old and he was twenty five. He brought her an
enormous diamond ring and married a month after their initial meeting.
A week after their first anniversary, Thompson was drafted in
(08:05):
order to report to Zachary Taylor in Kentucky. He was
made a sergeant and used his position to teach the
other soldiers how to play five card stud and craps.
The First World War ended, and Thompson went home without
having to serve overseas. He used some of his gains
to buy a new home for his long suffering mother.
Thompson didn't hesitate to take money from anyone he beat.
(08:26):
In fact, Thompson sometimes thought that arrogant rich folks had
the fleecing coming to them. He hustled and conned his
way through poker games, craps, pool games, propositions, and a
game he showed enormous promise for golf.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
I went purely crazy.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Over golf, Thompson said later he could play naturally left handed,
so a typical con would we play a golfer right handed,
and then offered double or nothing to play another game,
this time with his left hand.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
He usually won.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
The itinerant gambling lifestyle faded away with the invention of
the modern era of telegraphs and the professional game of
Las Vegas. Thompson said you couldn't cheat in Vegas with
their waxy cards and video cameras. He was paid to
appear at the first World Series of Poker, and he
co hosted with Chill Wills, the actor. Thompson's wife, Alice,
died young after she was hit by a car while
(09:14):
Thompson was away at work. He married three more times,
divorcing each. His final wife, Jeanette Bennett, said the divorce
so Thompson could afford to go into a retirement home.
He had gambled his entire life, but was living off
his Social Security checks because he hadn't invested any of it.
Thompson died in Texas at the retirement home in made
nineteen seventy four. He was eighty years old.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Special thanks to Greg Hangler as always for working with
a history guy and bringing these stories to you. If
you want more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to
his YouTube channel. The history guy. History deserves to be remembered.
Titanic Thompson's story here on our American story.
This is our American Stories, and our next story comes
to us from a man who's simply known as the
History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands
of people of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy
has also heard here in our American Stories. Here's the
History Guy with the story of Titanic Thompson, the greatest
(00:31):
cheat of all time.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
A gambler once bet al Capone that he could throw
a limon all the way to the top of a
five story building in a single throw. After Capone took
that crazy bet, the man walked up to a street
vendor and picked up a limon and went to throw it,
but sensing that this might be some sort of trick,
Capone instead picked up his own lemon, squeezed all the
juice out of it, handed it to the man and said,
no throw this unfazed, the man took a long running
(00:56):
jump and threw as hard as he could, and, to
al capone shock, the leomon went all the way to
the top of the building and landed on the roof.
What Capone didn't know is that that gambler had already
palmed the squished fruit that Capone had given him and
had instead thrown a lemon that was full of buckshot
that he had placed on the vendor earlier in preparation
for his outrageous bet. That gambler was a man named
(01:19):
Alvin Thomas, but he went by the name Titanic Thompson,
and among the people of his profession, he was truly
a titan The history of who is perhaps the world's
greatest wagerer deserves to be remembered. Alan Clarence Thomas was
born in eighteen ninety three in rural Missouri, near the
(01:39):
small town of Monnet. The last name Thompson that he
we adopted most of his adult life came from a
later newspaper missprint that he embraced as his own. According
to the family history, his father was gambling the night
Alvin was born and didn't see his new son until
he came home the next day. Apparently, his father couldn't
handle the new responsibilities that came with having a child,
so he took whatever cash he could find a house
(02:00):
and left. Alvin's mother didn't spend time bemoaning her fate.
She quickly remarried and ensured Alvin had a roof over
his head. Thomas's new stepfather wasn't particularly fond of the boy,
but taught him how to play cards and roll dice.
Alvin took to the games far more quickly than he
absorbed anything else. Later in life, Thompson said he couldn't read,
but numbers and odds always made sense to him. He
(02:22):
spent hours sitting alone in his room teaching himself to
a deptly shuffle cards, practicing dealing from the bottom of
the deck more quickly than the I could follow. Thompson
developed his own method of marking cards by putting spots
on the back or bending the edges.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
To be able to tell face cards by feel.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
He practiced throwing playing cards into a hat over and
over again, or tossing dice, figuring out how to hold
them and make them land like he wanted. Thompson would
write down the results of his dice throws, calculating odds
and combinations, long before others considered gambling a science of sorts,
but he wanted more than science. Thompson strove to elevate
gambling to an art form. He practiced shit jumping and
(03:00):
other simple skills like throwing coins into a cuff to
the point where his execution of them made him seem extraordinary.
According to Kevin Cook, author of the book Titanic, Thompson
the man who bet on everything. Thompson said, if a
thing's hard to do, most folks are too lazy to
do it. That puts me one up on them. Alvin
left home at the age of sixteen. He only had
(03:22):
fifty cents to his name, but he wasn't worried. He
would always say I've been broke, but never for more
than six hours at a time.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
He promised his mother that.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
He wouldn't drink or smoke, and he kept those promises,
although he engaged to numerous other vices. When he was
in high stakes games, he would drink water or milk
while the other high rollers were dulling their senses with alcohol,
and that was just fine by him. In Mandit, Thompson
discovered a man selling maps on the street. He offered
to sell maps for a percentage of the money, and
soon was wondering door to door selling maps. When the
(03:53):
luster wore off that job, Thompson joined a sharpshooter named
Captain Adam Henry Bogertis and has Bogartists miracle medicine. Thompson
wowed Bogatis with his shooting abilities, and together they built
roll Americans out of their money with promises of medicine
that could cure almost anything that was wrong.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
With you, from gout to crossed eyes.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
In actuality, the medicine was a mix of cocaine and alcohol,
which probably gave people bursts of energy if nothing else.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Thompson drew attention to the show by.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Bragging he could shoot a silver dollar out of the
air with one shot. The trick was to substitute a
real silver dollar with a pre punctured one and throw
it in the air while pulling the trigger. Thompson was
already able to palm adims like a pro, and fooled
audiences with the trick. After he left the Traveling Medicine Show,
Thompson began Chris costing the country, looking for games and
offering unsuspecting people propositions that he was certain to win.
(04:44):
It was in a pool haul in jop On, Missouri,
in nineteen twelve that Thompson added the Titanic to his name.
He just won a couple of hundred dollars off of
a local pool player when on his way out the door,
he read a sign offering two hundred dollars to the
person who could jump over the pool table without touching it.
Thompson announced to the room that he'd take the bat.
He walked out and returned later with a mattress that
(05:05):
he positioned on the other side of the pool table. Then,
taking a running start, he threw himself over the table
head first and landed on the mattress on the other side,
without touching the table and collecting on the bat. An
onlooker asked what the gambler's name was, and, according to legend,
another replied, it must be Titanic because he sings everybody.
Thompson had dedication and skill, but he wasn't above shifting
(05:28):
the odds with a bit of guile. Once he heard
of a skilled horseshoe pitcher named Frank Jackson who bragged
that he would bet any amount on a game of horseshoes.
Thompson saw opportunity, but there was a problem. He'd never
played horseshoes. He practiced in practice until he was ready.
He baited Jackson by telling some kids he could beat
anyone at horseshoes. As he planned, Jackson showed up after
(05:50):
he heard of the boast. Thompson offered to play for
ten dollars, but Jackson bulk, saying he played for real money,
so Thompson offered to play for ten thousand dollars. It
was all the money I have and flashing of water bills.
The hook was set. They played, and Thompson ringed three
in a row while Jackson's throws kept coming up a
foot short. Jackson lost ten thousand dollars, wondering why his
(06:14):
throws were so weak that day. Apparently, Jackson never found
out that Thompson had set the stakes forty one feet apart,
a foot more than the forty foot regulation. More serious
trouble found Thompson when he killed a man with a
hammer in nineteen ten. It had been a good night
for Thompson before the killing. He had won a river
bow through gambling and was playing craps on that same
(06:35):
boat with Jim Johnson. Thompson's girlfriend, Nelly, was with him
as he won role after roll, Johnson, drunken out of sorts,
accused Thompson of cheating and threw him overboard into the
dark river. By the time Thompson climbed back on the boat,
Johnson had torn Nelly's clothes in multiple places and was
threatening to take out his frustrations with Thompson on her.
(06:55):
Thompson was having none of it. He beat Johnson about
the head with a hammer and through the enco just
man into the river, where he drowned. The local sheriff
showed up to sort up the trouble and offered Thompson
a choice. He'd either come to jail and face charges
of murder, or give the sheriff the boat and get
out of town. Thompson gave up his boat and left.
The four other men Thompson would kill during his lifetime,
(07:17):
he claimed were trying to rob him.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
He got off every time.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Perhaps it was this early violent experience on the river
that convinced Thompson that women had no place on the
road with him, But throughout his life Thompson refused to
take any of his five wives on his travels. Thompson
preferred his wives to be young and beautiful, even in
his later years. His first marriage to eighteen year old
Nora Trushel ended in divorce when he refused to get
a normal job, to spend time at home with her,
(07:44):
or to stop seeing other women while on the road.
Alice Kane, his second wife, was a con man's kindred spirit.
Thompson said he met black haired Alice when she tried
to pick his pocket in Pittsburgh. She was seventeen years
old and he was twenty five. He brought her an
enormous diamond ring and married a month after their initial meeting.
A week after their first anniversary, Thompson was drafted in
(08:05):
order to report to Zachary Taylor in Kentucky. He was
made a sergeant and used his position to teach the
other soldiers how to play five card stud and craps.
The First World War ended, and Thompson went home without
having to serve overseas. He used some of his gains
to buy a new home for his long suffering mother.
Thompson didn't hesitate to take money from anyone he beat.
(08:26):
In fact, Thompson sometimes thought that arrogant rich folks had
the fleecing coming to them. He hustled and conned his
way through poker games, craps, pool games, propositions, and a
game he showed enormous promise for golf.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
I went purely crazy.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Over golf, Thompson said later he could play naturally left handed,
so a typical con would we play a golfer right handed,
and then offered double or nothing to play another game,
this time with his left hand.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
He usually won.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
The itinerant gambling lifestyle faded away with the invention of
the modern era of telegraphs and the professional game of
Las Vegas. Thompson said you couldn't cheat in Vegas with
their waxy cards and video cameras. He was paid to
appear at the first World Series of Poker, and he
co hosted with Chill Wills, the actor. Thompson's wife, Alice,
died young after she was hit by a car while
(09:14):
Thompson was away at work. He married three more times,
divorcing each. His final wife, Jeanette Bennett, said the divorce
so Thompson could afford to go into a retirement home.
He had gambled his entire life, but was living off
his Social Security checks because he hadn't invested any of it.
Thompson died in Texas at the retirement home in made
nineteen seventy four. He was eighty years old.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Special thanks to Greg Hangler as always for working with
a history guy and bringing these stories to you. If
you want more stories of forgotten history, please subscribe to
his YouTube channel. The history guy. History deserves to be remembered.
Titanic Thompson's story here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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