Tj Cloutier History, profile, and background

Among the famous poker players of the world, one of the absolutely most respected among his peers is T.J. Cloutier, originally of Richardson, Texas. Cloutier is nearly 70 years old and is one of the founders of Texas Hold'em poker. Among professional poker players, he is one of the last ones to have been a "road gambler", a man who traveled from town to town in search of poker games--often poker games where the locale was seedy and unsecure and there were plenty of guys at the table who'd better keep their hands on that table because they had holsters filled with loaded guns...and the difficult part wasn't winning the card games, it was getting the winnings through the door without getting a hole in your head.

Many professional poker players would tell you that it's none other than T.J. Cloutier who is the greatest all-around poker player in the world. With his favorite game being No Limit Hold'em, Cloutier has enjoyed 39 first place finishes, six World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets (having gone to the Main Event final table four times and twice been the runner-up), and over nine million dollars in total winnings. His first-place victories in more than 50 major poker tournies makes him the all-time champion in that regard. But through it all, Cloutier has always been the epitome of grace and high class.

T.J. Cloutier was always competitive at games and sports. He played hoops, football, and baseball at Jefferson High School in Daly City, California, and got an athletic scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley for both baseball and football. But when Cloutier left the university to go into the military to help his family with some hard financial times, he discovered his favorite "sport" of all--poker!

T.J. did eventually play professional football, for the CFL's Toronto Argonauts. But a knee injury forced him to quit that career, and he went to work in his family’s wholesale food business. When this closed up in 1976, he went to work for a Texas oil company, but he continued playing poker. Eventually, he was making more money from the game than he was at his job, and he decided to abandon all else and make Texas Hold'em his career.

Among the greatest moments for Cloutier and the poker world was the 2000 WSOP. This saw TJ Cloutier going up against the great "Jesus" Ferguson. Down to the final hand, Ferguson waited out a slightly worse hand than Cloutier (A9 vs. AQ) and got a 9 on the river to win the WSOP with a low pocket pair.

“Are we still friends?” asked a teary-eyed Ferguson.

“Of course. Don’t feel bad. You played great," replied Cloutier, who then hugged Ferguson.

But for T.J. himself, his greatest moment was when he won a large pot without any cards at a game in Shreveport, Louisiana.

"We'd been playing for quite a few hours and there was a lot of money on the table. A hand came up in which I had the stone nuts on fourth street. I had $5000 in front of me and made a $2000 bet. Wayne Edmunds was in the game and he had a habit of putting his head down after he called a bet, so that he never saw what was going on anywhere else. As I was making my bet, the dealer grabbed my cards and threw them in the muck. Of course, Wayne didn't see it happen...I have big hands and so I just kept them out in front of me like I was protecting my cards. The dealer burned and then turned the river card. I bet my last $3000 and Wayne threw his hand away. I won the pot without any cards! Everybody at the table except Wayne saw what had happened, but nobody said a thing. So, this is what I call my 'mystery hand' play.”

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