Where did "Titanic" come from?
I often get asked why I would name my account and substack after one of the most famous maritime disasters of all time and it is a good question.
The reason I picked this moniker is two fold -
Reason 1: Titanic has come to mean large things and I tend to like to think of my betting and (now) my models to be larger than life
Reason 2: I love gambling and I have not always taken it so seriously. When I first got started I would bet small amounts but I would bet on anything and everything….football, basketball, hockey, college, pros, drinking games in my fraternity house, you name it and I would bet on it…….a friend of mine even would turn Madden to auto play, set a spread and total and bet on that…..yeah I know we were degenerates. After college that same friend called me one day and told me he read a biography about a famous gambler and I reminded him of the protagonist. Fast forward a couple months and you would have found me living in NYC and frequenting underground poker games1 and with some degenerate friends I had made. I was talking to one about my gambling exploits and the buddy said “hey, have you ever heard of Titanic Thompson? I just read a book about him and you remind me of him!”
Well, yes, that was the same person that my friend from college was referring to as well so I went on Amazon and bought the book “Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet on Everything”. (NOTE: I highly recommend this book. He was a fascinating man)
So for about the last 10 years, I have adopted the gambling moniker as Titanic (if you played online poker over the years and saw that name across the virtual felt then we likely played together).
So you may ask, why today, why are you telling us this today? Well today is November 30th and today would have been Alvin Clarence Thomas’s 128th birthday.
If you want a primer to reading the book, check out his Wikipedia page.
These are as sketchy as you think they are and I am shocked I was not robbed on multiple occasions.