The Cookie is playing a final table on a live stream. $14K up top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hNfMOF_5qg

Another sad fall from poker royalty. Dude has been MIA for years now. Owes everyone and their mom $300 and will be remembered now more for being a sick craps degen rather than at 1 time a top poker tournament player.

He looks old for an 82 year old.

skipped to final 4 and fastforwarded during shuffles and it was pretty easy to watch brevity wise as far as streams go

really weird sizings by tj but i could see how it makes sense, opening 8bb as 2nd biggest stack with only 20bb total means that the bigger stack knows he's playing for rolls and thus only continues with super narrow range and makes an overfold to a shove super easy - still don't like it, but can understand the idea behind it and it seemed to have worked

He wasn’t the only one with weird sizings. $200k opens at $30k/$60k and $300k at $40k/$80k was pretty common.

I played $5 craps with TJ at Binion's one time. Two drunk AF sorority girls at the table yelling '...I have to feel my girlfriends titties before I roll hahahaha!...'

He didn't bat an eye and was fun to talk to. Bet he has some stories to tell.

i guess that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Heard when he cashed out there was a line people stretching out into the parking lot waiting to get paid. Sick if true.

I think that's every cashout with him. Not even joking. Hesrd that years ago too with him making a score.

wait what? i never heard he was a degen

You are trolling I assume? He got me for 400 - played in a satellite with him when I was relatively new at WSOP back in the 90's. We talked a bit during the game and after it was over he said "hey let me hold $400 and I'll get cash from my room and find you in the PL game and get it to you." So I did get a seat in the game and mentioned that I'd been talking to TJ and loaned him a little money. Everyone at the table started laughing at me. Of course never got the money back but got off cheap compared to some others.

One year, TJ did some marketing for my then-poker company. He was a sponsored pro. Shipped him $10K to enter the Main, he would keep any winnings but wear a patch, etc. ...

He did not make it to registration on the final day to do so. (That year, actually, a lot of folks got shut out of registration on that final day) No complaints though, he's TJ.

As far as playing against him , I did that a few times in small PLO tournaments at the Mirage. He was very personable and a good guy for the table and to observe in action.

Just my experience.

are you saying you got the $10k back? otherwise i do not understand the last sentence i bolded.

only knew he was a cookie

not suprised in the slightest though

have you seen him since? did you ask for it back?

Saw him a day or two later and he said I don't have it on me or something like that and I just wrote it off in my mind. Like I said, figured I got off cheap after the stories I heard from the PLH regs that I knew. If he had originally asked for more I probably would have "lent" it.

Hi Everyone:

Many years ago I was eating at the Bellagio Buffet when TJ Cloutier walked up to my table to introduce himself, I had never met him before then, and say hello. It was a very akward conversation since I just had a meeting with our attorney and one of the things we discussed was what, if anything, we needed to do about insults towards David Sklansky and myself that appeared in two books in which, with McEvoy, he was a co-author.

I brought this subject up to him and he claimed to have no idea what I was talking about. I believe this was true but it made for a very poor conversation.

Best wishes,
Mason

He probably was gonna hit you up for money before you startled him with your topic.

TJ was at the final table of Horse event in 2006 WSOP. Probably the best final table ever televised at the WSOP.

He looks skinny compared to how he looked in the beginning of the poker boom. He is a former CFL tight end so he has a bigger natural frame than a regular person.

All of the degenerate stories aren't made up I remember meeting a regular at Seneca Niagara casino in Niagara Falls NY. and the first thing TJ did was offer him private lessons in poker for X hundreds of dollars after he took a 101 live tournament course on the basics of donkaments. He said after the money was collected he saw TJ get is cut of the semi scam he was in the pits losing his share.

PS I saw a still of his frame and you weren't exaggerating his arms are just bone and he walks with a walking aid. This could be the last round up on the poker tables for Cloutier.

playing cash in Houston a couple weeks ago and he came up in conversation, old guy to me right said "if you ever see him tell him he still owes me $150" LOL sounds like he's a part of a long line

I think that certainly was possible.

Mason

back in the late 80's or early 90's was watching him play a cash game at Binion's, he won a fairly large pot and the losing player asked to see his hand. TJ ignored him so the guy reaches into the muck and picked up TJ's cards and looked at them. I thought TJ was going to hit him he was so pissed. Nobody else said a word over the flagrant violation so maybe the guy was some whale, he looked to be foreign.

Looking at the size of TJ's hands at the time I wouldn't have wanted to take a punch from him.

Bugsy's Club had a tournament series back in the day, where they were having 5 $220 buy in MTTs over the course of 5 weeks, and top 2 from each event would win a 50k package to the Turks & Caicos to play in a 500,000 sng, including fight & all inclusive resort accommodations and I think a few grand spending money. One of the perks/selling points was TJ Cloutier was a bounty in the qualifier tourneys, and would be in Turks & Caicos with the winners to give them a coaching session before the final. Well I make it down to 3 in the qualifier, and TJ was playing pretty aggressively, I get A10 and finally call one of his shoves, he flips over K8 and hits a K, I bust in 3rd for 4k. While TJ gets a seat to a tourney where he is supposed to be coaching the players lol.

its always unfortunate to see people who are now shells of their former self getting by and for whatever his ethics and finances are off the table, I'd say that for several years in the late 1990's TJ was one of, if not the best NLH tournament player in the world. Not defending his business prowess away from the table, but on the poker table before the boom not he was a dominant player.

There is no "fall" there. At least as far back as the 80s he was well known for owing everyone money and for being a degenerate pit gambler. He got financially sorted out when he started letting his backer pick up his prize money and distribute 1/3rd to TJ and 1/3rd to TJ's wife.

Perhaps it is hard for today's young poker players to understand, but I never got the impression from any of the many MANY old timers that he was a thief or con artist, or that it was impossible to ever get money off him (if they happened to catch him dead to rights with cash in hand). For the most part, they still think of him fondly, even if he still owes them X hundred dollars to this very day! And it was a always $200 here or there, not $10,000 or $50,000, or borrowing a rebuy to a cash game on the pretense that your money will arrive shortly, then slipping out while the lender is in the bathroom (as Chino has been alleged to do).