TJ Cloutier
Born seventy two years ago in Albany California, TJ Cloutier attended the University of California based on a football and base ball athletic scholarship. He was to later join the army, where he took his poker game seriously before leaving the army and joining a football club where he used to play soccer. During one event, he was unlucky enough to be elbowed and lost three teeth. He says he actually felt two of them slip through his lips. He was stitched and forced to get back to the pitch and continue with the game. This was a clear testament that football wasn’t taking him softly as he had expected.
It was after he sustained injuries while playing soccer and developing knee problems that he decided to quit football. TJ then decided to start some business which had to shut down because his partner was busy embezzling funds. He briefly worked in oil fields in Texas and he would occasionally move out to casinos to play poker before moving to Los Angeles where he seriously sunk himself in the game. This was after realizing that he was making far much more money in poker than he did in those oil rigs and he then decided to quit.
Cloutier would even commute all the way to Dallas tree times each week to play poker. It was again after trying his luck at the tournament play in Las Vegas that he won a two million jack pot. He is a well known contributor to the world of poker, having authored four books and is a frequent writer in card player.com, where he writes poker articles. This legendary poker player is known to attend poker tournaments accompanied by his wife. It was in the 2006 WSOP tournament that this man walked away with four hundred and eighty thousand dollars, having closely tried to reach such amounts way back in the 1998 WSOP main event, where he walked off four hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars richer.
But perhaps the climax of Cloutier’s career was way back in the year two thousand world of series main poker event where he won a record eight hundred and ninety six thousand dollars. Though still a skilled poker player, Cloutier still participates in poker tournaments, the recent one having been last year’s no limit hold em where he won four thousand, five hundred and twenty three dollars. He is lauded as the only poker player to have taken home the title of being poker’s greatest earner, with his tournament winnings estimated to fall between seven and eight million dollars. No other poker player, apart from him, who has won events in all the three types of Omaha at the WSOP tournament.
This man, nicknamed ‘the Albany cowboy’ has six bracelets under is name, besides having made it to the final table two times on the world poker tour. This veteran poker player believes in the power of observation when it comes to poker and he believes that it is this that has made him win all those poker tournaments that he has. He has been quoted as saying that knowing ones enemy is key to poker victory and is also said to play with class and grace at the table. In the poker world, he is said to be a great story teller and his fellow players have described him as one with a great sense of humor.
His memory has been dubbed photographic, literally and he always leaves people amazed with a story on how he won a huge pot with no cards at all. On a scale of one to ten, the player’s ability against a weak player is placed at the eighth position while his ability against strong players is ranked at six. His aggressiveness has also come at number six. He keeps telling young poker players to ensure that they always learn some thing new each time they play poker. His playing skills are unrivaled as he is known to make huge bets as a risk, only for them to finally pay off in the last minute.
He vividly recalls how a dealer grabbed his cards and threw them on the table as he was making his bet and it happened that his opponent never saw it transpiring, but he went on to act as if he still had his cards in his hands and the dealer then burned and turned the river card. He had only three thousand dollars left on which he made a bet. As soon as the dealer turned the river card, the opponent threw his hands and TJ won the tournament without any cards.
He is known to perform quite a number of tricks during a game, which hands him a win even against a much more experienced opponent. He has a tendency to take his time before making any move and this has been lauded as some of his strengths.
Posted by Joel
on May 9 2010. Filed under Player Profiles.
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