One of my favorite hobbies is to research historical figures and find out if they had a passion for poker, dice or any of the other gambling games popular over the years.
Somebody once said that history is time made up of half-truths and lies. Perhaps that is so. But human nature has a hard time changing. I believe gambling was as popular with the caveman as it is with the entrepreneurs of the 21st century, whether their name is Steve Jobs, Donald Trump or Steve Wynn.
Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clements, is one of the people I researched.
I went into the project believing Twain was a perfect candidate for a poker player. He was famous for some of his gambling quotes, he lived in Virginia City, NV. where he worked on a newspaper owned by his older brother, Orion, and he wrote a famous short story about a gambler about a jumping frog in California.
I smiled as I read one of Twain's quotes: 'It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and ply your hand for 100 times what it is worth. Forty-nine times out of 50, nobody dares to call and you roll in the chips.' Another well known quote is 'He had the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.'
Try as I might, I could not find solid evidence that Twain did a lot of gambling during his lifetime.
When he worked as a typesetter and reporter on his brother's newspaper, he would often retire to a popular Virginia City bar and nurse his drinks while discussing politics and life with the other patrons. He even tried his luck prospecting in the Comstock Lode, which produced a lot of gold and silver for the miners.
Twain was born in the small town of Florida, MO. on Nov. 30, 1835, the sixth of seven children. Only three of his siblings survived childhood.
His father was a popular leader in the community who became an attorney and a judge. Young Clements, who would later adopt the pen-name of Mark Twain, was an avid reader who took to the river and studied to be a steamboat captain.
He became an expert on reading the currents from St. Louis to New Orleans and piloted steamboats on that route. He even got his younger brother, Henry, a job on a steamboat. That turned into a tragedy when Henry was killed in an explosion shortly after he went to work -- an incident that scarred Clements for the rest of his life.
After the Civil War broke out, Clements joined the Confederate Army and served briefly.
Although he earned most of his money as a writer, he had a keen interest in science and inventing things. His hobbies cost him a lot of money in investments and he was forced to declare bankruptcy.
Clements formed a publishing house and made money when he published the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War ended. However, he lost money on other books and eventually folded the company.
As Mark Twain, author, he did a lot of traveling and wrote such books as 'Letters From Hawaii,' 'The Innocents Abroad' and 'Follow The Equator.' His books attracted a great deal of international attention and he became a popular after dinner speaker because of his humor, insight and wit.
He earned tremendous royalties by publishing 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,' 'The Prince and the Pauper,' 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' and 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.'
Today the Mark Twain Casino operates in LaGrange, MO., along the Mississippi River, just a few miles north of Hannibal, MO. where Clements spent much of his childhood. The casino features slots, video poker and table games, but no live poker.
His brilliance as a writer caused William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway to agree that he was, indeed, the father of American literature.
Clements was born as Haley's Comet streaked overhead. During his lifetime he said on several occasions that he expected to leave the world when Haley's Comet appeared again. Sure enough, on April 21, 1910, one day after the comet came closest to the earth, Clements died of a heart attack and is buried in Elmira, N.Y.
Geno 7 years ago
Mark Twain was very open about his thoughts. I doubt if anybody could have curtailed him from his thinking or from publishing his real opinions about things.
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Vanenhox 7 years ago
http://www.pokerplayernewspaper.com/content/mark-twain-american-poet-and-poker-player-4295 The link might be interesting, because near the end of the article--if I remember correctly--there is a reference to a historical source that attests to Twain's gambling and Poker Playing.
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Vanenhox 7 years ago
I find it interesting that there is no record on the gambling habits of such a public figure as Mr. Twain. Perhaps this is because gambling was thought of as immoral by a greater number of people in the nineteenth century than hold such an opinion today. Such immoral activity might have been thought of as more or...
I find it interesting that there is no record on the gambling habits of such a public figure as Mr. Twain. Perhaps this is because gambling was thought of as immoral by a greater number of people in the nineteenth century than hold such an opinion today. Such immoral activity might have been thought of as more or less private and off limits to comment about on the record.
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