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We`ll kick off with a salutory tale from Bingo about one of the all time great gamblers & hustlers, Titanic Thompson
Reading his biography there was one story about his mercurial life above all which struck me as a great lesson that all gamblers would do well to adopt. I`ll pay hommage to the great crime writer Damyon Runyan (who in fact used Titanic as the model for his character, Sky Masterson, in the Broadway play and movie, Guys and Dolls) by plagiarising his unique prose style.
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As is usual for some citizens who find themselves short of scratch for one reason or another, normally on account of consorting with the type of doll who above anything else loves to have a certain amount of scratch so she can buy those things that make her feel good, and finding no one to borrow the potatoes to keep in swell with the dame, these citizens tend to go to the race track. It was on spring day with just enough dimes in his pocket to try out his luck at Aqueduct that Harry the Horse ran into Titanic Thompson. 
Now most citizens who are in the game of wanting some scratch but don`t do the rounds to pull in legitimate kind of work have heard of Titanic and know him to be a fine citizen indeed, on account of his propositions that had won him a great deal of scratch (and we might add, a few scratches from aggrieved parties who would like to poke his eyes out on feeling they had been cheated out of their scratch). Harry was certainly in short pants with regard to having no scratch at this time but he wasn`t going to do a number on Titanic. So he approaches Titanic outside the gates of the track at the end of the meeting and Harry approaches him with a hello and it`s been a while. Of course the conversation turns very quickly to how things went today as Harry knows that citizens who begin to talk about their doll taking all their scratch and running off with some party like Chinese Bob the Bookie is not a conversation to have. So he asks Titanic how he did at the track and Titanic, who couldn`t smile so much on account of how his mouth was cut by an angry citizen at a some card game where Titanic was considered to have cheated which is not so difficult to believe as Titanic was very good at busting people`s flushes with a full house, replied as follows:
" Well, I put $5 on the outsider of 6 in the first at 16/1 and the favourite was going backward by the time my filly caught up and went on to win by 2 and a half. Come the 2nd race I liked the look of the colt in stall 8 who I gave a lump of sugar to in the ring. So I put my whole $85 on and he cantered home 7 clear @ 4/1. The third was difficult in a rag field so I put down my $425 on the fav @ 2/1. Hacked up. The fourth I missed as I was diverted with making a proposition with a citizen as to how many melons were on the back of the truck parked just here where we stand. I added the easy dollar win ($100) to the $1275 and had it all down on the 2nd fav in the fifth @ 5/1. His extra long neck got him home so I`m coming to final race and I put everythin I had on the fav. He was 5 clear coming into the turn and still 2 lengths good with a 100 yards to go with this filly catching him hard. Neck and neck to the line and my fav gets edged off by a nose or somesuch so that was a close thing."
Harry asks, "Titanic, that`s a sad thing and it makes me sorry to hear of such luck. So, how much you lose in the end? Titanic with not too much change of expression from that he held while telling Harry the horse of how his day went replied:
Oh, not so bad. $5
