Tommy Thomas, Titanic's son, wrote me this:
Hubert Cokes was my godfather and I spent time with him when I was growing up and knew him very well ... He was not a capable card man like Ty but used some of the gaffs. I still have a leather cup he gave me where you twist the bottom and the dice are switched. Used it playing backgammon, another cup just like it that was straight for your opponent ... I would go down to the Elks in Evansville and watch Hubert play one-pocket for hours. He would always get on Ty's case just like Ty would do when we were talking about him. Ty said Hubert was the most dangerous smart man he ever knew. He would carry two .45 pistols and walk into any pool hall and challenge anyone to a game of one pocket or a fist fight for any amount of money.
Over the years when I would call Hubert he would let me know he was following my career as a gambler and always seemed to know when I took off a big score. He did not teach me about cards but did teach me about life.
Hubert told me a story about Ty you might like. He said they were in Kansas City and he bankrolled Ty to go to Evansville … where they were playing poker for high stakes because of all the oil money. Hubert had not heard from Ty for weeks and thought he would call him to see if he was winning any money. He talked to Ty and he told him things were so bad everyone was soaking watches just to get by. Hubert knew Ty well enough he caught the next train to Evansville. He walked into the poker game and saw that Ty was winning thousands of dollars. They both took their winnings and bought up oil leases and became wealthy in the oil business. Cokes kept his, Ty ended giving my mother all producing income and half of all mineral deeds when they divorced. That was about ten grand a month for Mom in the forties.
Ty and Hubert were always going to kill each other but really were good friends. The last serious beef they had was in the McCurdy Hotel. Ty was so angry at Hubert he waited in the hotel lobby for him to come down the elevator and was going to shoot him. Cokes figured Ty would be waiting for him and came down through the kitchen and walked up behind Ty and said, "Slim, are you ready to go to the golf course?" After that they managed to get along.
In New York Titanic was courting the biggest mob boss and gambler, Arnold Rothstein. The two became close friends. Damon Runyon, one of America's most famous writers was also there, hearing all the Titanic Thompson stories. His character, Sky Masterson, patterned on Titanic, was in a short story that became the hit play and movie Guys and Dolls. Arnold Rothstein was the model for the Nathan Detroit character. Like Ty, Sky was a fabulous dresser, very handsome, a lady’s man, and a huge proposition bettor to whom the sky was the limit. Marlon Brando played Sky in the movie, while Frank Sinatra played Nathan Detroit.
Titanic once won a bet with Rothstein throwing a heavy peanut across Times Square. He had packed the peanut with birdshot, lead. He did this with walnuts, pecans, oranges, lemons, and he was always ready. He won a bet on license plate poker when the car he had pre-arranged had 333 and drove by when Ty doffed his fedora. Ty hired an ex-math professor to teach him the odds on many dice, poker, and prop bets. He won a bet from Rothstein betting two of the next thirty people to walk by would have the same birthday. Ty learned a great many props from the professor. At any game, Titanic kept up a steady stream of challenges that he could keep in his head, but made other gamblers dizzy.
On a train ride to the track the gamblers bet on how many white horses they would see. The next day, Rothstein had hired a man to plant extra white horses. Ty had hired a man to plant even more. Ty won the bet by guessing a number higher than Rothstein’s and then admitting what he had done.
Ty finally got Rothstein in a three-day poker game where everyone was cheating Rothstein, especially Nate Raymond, Ty, and Joe Bernstein, now in the Poker Hall of Fame. Rothstein lost $500,000 and was very slow to pay. The houseman for the game, George “Hump” McManus killed him. The publicity for McManus' murder trial made Titanic Thompson a nationally-known name. The public saw newspaper pictures of a rail-thin, 6'2" movie-star-looking, handsome, tall man, with thick, jet-black hair. Ty was immaculately dressed in expensive clothes, with big sparkling diamonds on several fingers. While testifying, Ty was asked if poker is a game of chance. “Not the way I play it,” Ty said.
The stock market crash sent Titanic roaming all over America in the 1930s, often with Hubert Cokes or Minnesota Fats. He came here, to Lubbock, Texas, from the 1930s until the early 1960s. Johnny Moss was living here in 1938, when Ty offered a proposition that Johnny could not shoot a 46 with only a four iron on nine holes at Meadowbrook, our local golf course. Moss had his four iron welded down into a two iron, but he couldn't sink putts because Titanic had paid a man to raise the lips on each cup. Moss snapped and had a man go around and tap them back down. Moss had his whole bankroll bet, $8300, and won.
At draw poker Ty's prop was that Moss did all the dealing, but Ty could cut anytime. He had the aces crimped and could cut to one as needed. In his biography, Moss said he won all his money back and a Cadillac after he figured it out.
When Ty returned to Meadowbrook when he was older, he'd have a top golfer as a partner or do prop bets of throwing half dollars into a cup, or pitching golf balls into a shot glass. He’d bet he could make two balls in three strokes from 25 feet. He'd hit both balls at the same time on the first stroke. At other golf courses, he'd bet he could chip into a row boat or bet he could shoot flying birds out of the air with his pistol. Like his peanuts, the pistol was loaded with bird shot.
I caddied at Meadowbrook as a teenager in the early fifties. Sometimes, on a full moon, called a Comanche Moon in Texas, the gamblers played by moonlight. Once, a rich-looking, tall man hired me to retrieve golf balls while he was trying to teach a Doberman Pinscher to catch balls he had lofted high into the air. The dog was trying, but would usually drop the golf ball. This guy would hit a hard, low line drive and hit the dog in the side. When I told people about this, they said it had to be Titanic Thompson, but I'll never know.
In 1939, there was an oil boom in Evansville, Indiana, and the poker game at the McCurdy Hotel had $25,000 pots. Name gamblers playing included Titanic Thompson, Hubert Cokes, Minnesota Fats, and high roller Ray Ryan.
Both Cokes and Ryan got very rich from oil royalties, while Titanic made a lot of money on royalties but gave his mineral interest to his wife when they divorced. Neither Titanic nor Ryan could ever beat Minnesota Fats at one-pocket, however, and they lost a lot of money. In his delightful biography of Titanic, The Man Who Bet on Everything, Kevin Cook said Fats won a million dollars from Titanic playing pool.
Maybe…
It was in Evansville that Titanic made a famous prop bet. He hired a farmer to count the watermelons on his truck and park near the McCurdy Hotel. He got the gamblers on the porch involved in the conversation and bet he could guess very near the exact number of watermelons on the truck. As he did in golf, pool or horseshoes, he only won by one. Just one, as always.
Golf was Titanic's best game and, without cheating, he was one of the very best in the United States. He never entered golf tournaments, saying he could not afford the pay cut, because he played for more on one hole than top pros made in a year. When Nick the Greek got him in the country clubs of California, Ty beat some the well-known golfers. He stayed one of the best for 20 years.
The conversation never stopped. A million props: the math props he’d learned; the eye-hand coordination props he’d practiced hours on end. He'd bring in a “ringer” – a pro such as Ben Hogan, Raymond Floyd or Lee Elder – after he had worked up the bet.
Ty always put grease on the club face to improve distance and control, and when Jack Binion had a professional gambler’s golf tournament, they allowed grease.
Ben Hogan, one of America's greatest golf legends, said Ty was the best shot-maker ever and also the best short game player, and that he could beat anyone right- or left-handed. Ty would join a country club, lose on the small, appear a braggart, and work up a really large bet. It might take weeks.
When Lee Trevino refused his invitation to go on the road, Ty came back to El Paso with Raymond Floyd and he “barely beat” Trevino. This was when Ty was old and had $20,000 on the match.
Next Ty played Byron Nelson, then America’s leading pro, in Dallas in 1933 for some big money, with many people betting on Nelson, while Ty “moved in” to take all bets. The conversation had Ty getting a three-stroke handicap. Nelson shot a 67. You know what Ty shot? Exactly what he needed to win the bet, a 69.
At times he was near the course record, if he got in a jam. His years of throwing and practising hand-to-eye coordination came in handy. He used slices and hooks as he needed them, and put a lot of “English” down when he needed it too; be it in pool, golf or capturing another teenage bride.
Titanic Thompson played partners with some of the most famous golf pros.
He’d try every kind of bet with Lee Elder as his caddy, the first prominent African-American pro golfer. Elder would wear overalls and appear a little slow, then Titanic would offer to take his caddy as partner and play the best two golfers in town, and Ty would play left-handed. To his credit, Titanic made Elder a full partner and gave him an even split of the money.
As Ty became older and more famous, folks would ask if he was Titanic Thompson whenever he laid out a proposition, and gamblers would make small bets against him just to see him do his legendary throwing props. And when plastic cards replaced paper cards, his big poker advantage vanished, while casinos, with their long dice tables, could prevent his control of the dice.
And so, like many of the great gamblers who had a lot of gamble in them – Johnny Moss, Nick the Greek and Minnesota Fats – Ty didn't have much money at the end of his life.
Tommy Thomas, Titanic's son, was born in Evansville in 1944. After Titanic left, Tommy read about him as he grew up and began to practise long hours with a deck of cards. He became a master-cheater, travelling the country, practising hours and hours until he became an even better card mechanic than his father. Ty and I both said so. I caught Tommy cheating in a huge Hold’em game in 1975.
When Tommy and an ageing Titanic were finally reunited, they began to play against each other for the remainder of Ty’s life, and to cheat each other. Ty helped his son get in poker games and sent him back to Evansville to be tutored by Hubert Cokes. I asked Tommy about the end of Ty's life, spent in a nursing home. He wrote me this.
Every week I was in town he would call every day, saying, "What time will you be here?" I rarely missed a day being with my dad. Ty and I loved to gamble with each other, playing heads up poker. Whoever won the other's stack of chips got a hundred dollars.
The only difference was Dad didn't have much money and we played his best game, Pitch. I reminded Dad he had loaned me money to go to Tyler Junior College when we first met, and, after all the years of gambling with each other, I felt like I still owed him $500.
If Dad lost [the game], I would take it off the $500; if he won, I would pay him. We played for $25 a game and he was very sharp and the best player. Make no mistake, Dad and I took no prisoners and would win at any cost. If we could cheat and get away with it, so be it.