Editor’s Note: Jack Becker is the editor of Caprock Chronicles and is a Librarian Emeritus from Texas Tech University. He can be reached at jack.becker@ttu.edu. Today’s article about Amarillo Slim is by frequent contributor Chuck Lanehart, Lubbock attorney and award-winning Western history writer.
Amarillo Slim’s reputation as a cowboy gambler rivals the reputations of Wild Bill Hickock, Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson a century earlier. Like the legendary gamblers of the Old West, Amarillo Slim seemed larger than life—tall, slim (of course), wearing fancy handmade boots, a Stetson hat and packing a pistol—complete with a Texas drawl bursting with bravado. And like his Old West gambling counterparts, he left a legacy of highs and lows.
Thomas Austin Preston Jr. was born in Johnson, Arkansas in 1928, but his family soon moved to Turkey, Texas. After his parents divorced, his mother returned to Arkansas. His father moved to Amarillo, which the youngster always called home. He said, “It’s a good thing he did, because Amarillo Slim sounds a heck of a lot better than Turkey Tom or Arkansas Austin.”
As a teenager, Thomas skipped school to play snooker, becoming proficient, and learning to hustle pool. Shortly after World War II, he joined the US Army.
Stationed in Europe, he gave pool exhibitions with USO shows, but he spent much of his time running a black market in cigarettes and nylon hose. He even fixed a GI baseball game that earned him a fortune in gambling bets.
When he left the Army at age 19, Thomas was a wealthy man, and he purchased a new shiny black Cadillac in Manhattan. The 6-foot-4, 170-pound teenager was known everywhere as “Slim.”
He returned to Texas and set about his lifelong career as a professional gambler.
During the 1950s, his wife and young son joined him as he travelled the country hustling pool in local joints, much like in the movie, “The Hustler.”
He won and lost many games against the real Minnesota Fats, who inspired him to nickname himself “Amarillo Slim,” a reverse homage to the “fat man.”
Slim created a sort of hick cowboy character for himself.
“It never hurts for potential opponents to think you’re more than a little stupid and can hardly count all the money in your hip pocket, much less hold on to it,” he said.
He went about earning a decent living gambling at pool, claiming he was “the fourth best player in Tulia, Texas.”
He also set up an illegal bookmaking operation in Midland.
His profession was fraught with danger, however.
Slim was roughed up and robbed on more than one occasion, but police were rarely involved due to the nefarious activities that spawned the violence.
He began to carry a pistol.
“I can’t remember . . . not having my snub 38 loaded in my hip pocket and just about everybody else in the game carried a gun too,” he said. “We weren’t looking to do nothing to one another. We were worried about somebody coming through the doors.”
By the 1960s, Slim became weary of the travel and risk required by hustling pool.
He concentrated instead on a relatively safer and more stable hustle: poker. He is credited with helping popularize “Texas Hold ‘Em,” now the most common variation of the game.
He also was instrumental in establishing the immensely successful World Series of Poker (WSOP), and his WSOP win in 1972 launched him as perhaps the first modern poker celebrity. He went on to win multiple poker championships over three decades.
Slim appeared in magazines, on the game show “I’ve Got a Secret,” several talk shows including Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show,” and he had a small part in the 1974 Robert Altman movie “California Split.” He published his autobiography, “Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People” and instructional books about poker.
He would bet on anything—called “proposition” bets. Slim claimed to have won a fortune playing dominoes against Willie Nelson.
He beat Minnesota Fats at pool with a broomstick, Bobby Riggs at table tennis with a skillet, and Evel Knievel at golf with a hammer.
He once claimed he could drive a golf ball a mile and, after taking bets, led the suckers to a frozen lake and easily won their money.
In his later years, Slim lived with his wife of 50-plus years, Helen, in their 6,800 square-foot Amarillo home, where he rode horses, hunted and oversaw family investments in three cattle ranches, four Pizza Planets, three Smoothie Kings and two Swenson’s.
Unfortunately, Slim’s fame was tarnished by scandal.
In March of 2003, he was indicted for indecency with his 12-year-old grandchild. He pled “no contest” to a reduced charge of misdemeanor assault in 2004, and his public reputation never recovered.
Amarillo Slim died of colon cancer at the age of 83 on April 29, 2012.
The Wit and Wisdom of Amarillo Slim
Amarillo Slim was known for his wisecracks, witticisms and one liners. Here are a few.
“You can shear a sheep a hundred times, but you can skin it only once.”
“Look around the table. If you don’t see a sucker, get up, because you’re the sucker.”
“Sometimes the lambs slaughter the butcher.”
“My favorite chip trick is to make everyone’s chip stack disappear.”
“If you are going to bluff, make it a big one.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Caprock Chronicles on Amarillo Slim, celebrity gambler of Texas Panhandle
Reporting by By Chuck Lanehart, special for the Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
