Cloutier has won more major poker tournaments than anyone — some 55 — making him the leading money winner in tournament poker with between $7 million and $8 million in winnings. If you ask players on the tournament circuit who they think are the best poker players in the world, T. J. Cloutier's name always comes up. Not because he's won the Big One. He hasn't ... yet. And not because he's made the most money at the World Series of Poker. He hasn't ... although he was the first player to make more than $1 million at it without winning the main event. His name is always mentioned because his peers highly respect and fear him as an opponent. "T. J. is the number one no-limit poker player in the world," said Mansour Matloubi, the 1990 WSOP champion. WSOP tournament coordinator Jack McClelland concurs: "T. J. is one of the very best all-around players on the tournament trail today." Co-author of three poker books: Championship No Limit and Pot Limit Holdem, Championship Omaha Pot Limit, Limit, 8 or Better, Championship Holdem - Limit, Cloutier was born in 1939 in Albany, California and now resides in Richardson, Texas. He started playing poker in 1956 and lists Chip Reese, Erik Seidel, Ben Roberts and Surrindar Sunar as his most respected poker players.
     Before he went on the road to make his living playing poker, Cloutier played pro football for the Montreal Allouettes, and later owned a wholesale food business with his father and brother in the San Francisco area. When that business closed in 1976 because of an embezzlement by an outside partner, he headed for Texas with $100 in his jeans. "I went to work for six months as a derrick man on the oil rigs. On my off days, I was playing poker. Pretty soon, I was making more money at poker than I was on the rigs -- and I'd been freezing up there, anyway -- so that's how I moved into playing poker full time," he explained.
     Today Cloutier, who lives with his wife Joy in Texas, is still a travelin' man, hitting the highways and airways to play major tournaments across the nation. With Tom McEvoy, he also is the author of a new poker book, Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold'em. In addition to extensive chapters on no-limit and pot-limit ring game and tournament strategy, the book contains several of Cloutier's famous road stories. One interesting story was his "mystery hand" story. "I was playing pot-limit hold'em down in Shreveport. 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 $5,000 in front of me and made a $2,000 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. "What do I do now?!" I was wondering. 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 $3,000 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."
     When asked how he gets a line on the other players he says "The main thing is being very observant and watching what players do in different situations. A fella' who used to play with us in Texas years ago would play as good a poker game as anybody I'd ever seen play ... for the first two hours. Then he'd hit a stone wall and his whole game would revert back to the way he always played. You could've put a stop watch on him. He'd start bluffing in bad spots and would start giving his money away. With a player like that, you know that he's going to crumble in two hours, so you just wait him out and win the money. I've been very observant throughout my entire life and I've always had a sort of photographic memory for how people play their hands in certain situations. If you and I had played poker together five years ago, I wouldn't necessarily recall your name today, but I would remember your face and how you played your hands in different spots, your tendencies. I think that knowing your opponents is the most important thing in big-bet poker. To do that, you have to be alert at all times, even when you're not in a hand, because you can learn something valuable. If a wing fell off a gnat at the end of the table, I'd see it