Born in 1939 in Albany, CA and still going strong, TJ Cloutier is without doubt one of the finest and most successful poker players who has ever lived. In a poker career spanning almost 50 fun-filled years, he has won over 50 titles in major tournaments ($500+) and shows no sign of slowing down, making a profit in the 2nd annual Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship in Vegas only last week.
His more spectacular achievements include winning the $10,000 Diamond Jim Brady No Limit Hold’em event at the Bicycle Club three years in a row (1990-2), and being the first player to make a million at the WSOP without winning the main event. In spite of never winning the coveted main event title, he is the 3rd overall WSOP money winner, making just a few grand shy of $3 million out of other players over the years. TJ has twice finished second, once to Chris Ferguson (in 2000) and once, famously, to his friend Bill Smith in 1985. On the 1985 occasion, TJ, winding up short after his nines lost to Bill’s Kings, found an Ace and went all in without looking at his other card. The other card turned out to be a 3 and Bill’s pair of threes held up. TJ makes out he only played it that way because Bill was drunk and “he gave money away when he was drinking.” Not that time he didn’t, but second place in the WSOP main event is about as good a consolation prize as you’ll find anywhere.
Being such an old-timer, TJ Cloutier has seen it all. He is a proper ‘character’, one of the last old-fashioned travelling gamblers from the days before that great gambling tool, the internet, ensured that no-one would ever have to leave their homes again. His first job was playing pro football for the Montreal Allouettes, and then he ran a wholesale food business with his father and brother until an unfortunate embezzlement incident not involving TJ forced them to close in 1976. Thereafter TJ went to Texas to work on the oil rigs and pretty soon he was making more money playing poker on his days off than he was making from actual work, so he decided to do the decent thing and quickly turned professional. His strategy for consistently winning is mainly just down to straightforward paying attention – play with him once and he’ll remember your style forever. “If a wing fell off a gnat at the end of the table, I’d see it,” he says.
TJ is full of stories about the poker world’s ‘good old days’ when everyone carried guns to games and had a fine old time robbing each other and shooting each other dead. The way he tells them, it’s really a wonder he’s survived this long at all. These days he’s still moving around wherever there’s a game going on, but he has a permanent home in Richardson TX with his wife Joy and their six children. As well as relieving a lot of people of a lot of chips over the years, TJ has given back to the poker community, co-writing three books about no-limit and pot-limit Hold’em, limit Hold’em, and Omaha. Aside from playing poker and travelling around looking for a game, his interests are golf and Barbra Streisand.
