Interview with T. J. situs slot deposit pulsa tanpa potongan Cloutier
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.
No, 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."
Cloutier won two gold bracelets at the 1994 WSOP, one for
pot-limit hold'em and the other for Omaha high-low. He also has garnered a WSOP
trophy in limit Omaha, and placed second to his long-time friend, Bill Smith,
in the 1985 championship match. Altogether, Cloutier has won 43 titles in major
tournaments, including the $10,000 no-limit hold'em championship at the Diamond
Jim Brady three years in a row. But as impressive as his record is, Cloutier is
equally as well-known as a story teller. During breaks in the hectic action at
the Series, you'll see him surrounded by other poker players listening to his
fascinating and humorous tales about the gamblers he has met over the past 21
years in smoky back-room Texas games, players who "faded the white
line" back and forth from Dallas to Houston to Shreveport. Cloutier is one
of the last of the legendary road gamblers whose numbers are, unfortunately,
dwindling each year. Before he went on the road to make his living playing
poker, Cloutier played pro semua situs slot mpo 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. Sitting at an unused poker table
during the recent L. A. Poker Classic at the Commerce Club, I listened and
laughed as the master of poker tales spun off one yarn after the other from a
seemingly endless skeen of memories.
T. J. Cloutier: "Little Red" Ashee (who's bigger than
I am at about 6'5" tall and 300 pounds) and I were staying at the Anthony
Motel down in Hot Springs, Arkansas, back in the '70s while we were going to
the horse races. "Let's go next door," he says. "Jack Straus is
there." So we start talking with Jack and pretty soon we hear a pounding
on the door. Jack opened the door and let a guy in. You had to know Jack to
understand this story. He borrowed and loaned a lot of money in his time, and
it was always on what we called "principle." Principle meant that
Jack set up a certain day to pay back his loan, and he only paid it on that
exact day. Seems that Jack had borrowed $5,000 from this fellow and the guy had
come over to dun him for the money. "I've still got 30 days to pay that
off," Jack said, "so quit dunning me." So, the guy left, but as
he was going down the stairs, a second man was coming up them. "I'm down
on my luck," the man tells Jack. "Could you loan me
"10,000?" And Jack peeled the $10 grand right out of his pocket and
gave it to him! One time when we were on the golf course, Jack told me that he
liked me because I was like him. "I'm broke one day and have a fortune the
next day," he said. "And I don't give a damn."
Dana Smith: You played with some colorful characters in those
days, didn't you?
TJC: Yes. One of them was George McGann. George loved to play
poker, but he was a stone killer. He stood about five feet eight inches tall,
and weighed about 145 pounds, and he always wore a suit and tie. Always carried
two guns with him, too. One day, George was playing in Dallas and he got broke.
So he pulled out his gun and robbed everybody at the game, took every dime they
had. "Boys, I'm short," he said. But the kicker to this story is that
the very next day, he came back into the game, sat down, and played with these
same guys ... and nobody said a word! Some years later, George and his wife
were murdered at the same time. The rumor was that he had been collecting money
for somebody and they had set him up.
DS: Tell me about you and Bill Smith.
TJC: He was one of the greatest players of all time, Bill Smith
was. He was the tightest player you'd ever played in your life when he was
sober. And when he was halfway drunk, he was the best player I'd ever played
with. But when he got past that halfway mark, he was the worst player I'd ever
played. And you could always tell when he was past the halfway point because he
started calling the flop. Say a flop came 7-4-10 -- he'd say, "21!"
When he got up to take a walk, he would have a little hop in his step, a
"git-up in his gittalong" we used to call it. And then you knew he
was gone. You never worried about Bill when he was sober because you knew that
he played A-B-C -- tight -- and you knew where he was all the time. The only
time you worried about him was when he was about halfway drunk, and then he'd
play all the way to "H." But he had such great timing on his hands
when he was younger and wasn't drunk ... he'd make some fabulous plays, plays
you couldn't believe. Bill was a truly great player.
DS: What happened in the 1985 title match at the WSOP?
TJC: When it got to two-handed, I had the lead against Bill, but
the key hand of the whole match happened when I had two nines and he had two
kings. He moved in and I called him. Bill won the pot and doubled up. Then he
had a big lead, and so I started chopping back at him. There were 140 players
that year, with $1,400,000 in chips in play, and I got back up to $350,000.
Then Bill came in with a little raise, and I was looking down at an ace in my
hand ... didn't even look at the other card, just made it look like I had. I
went over the top of him with the whole $350,000. I knew he had to make a
decision and that if he made the wrong one, I'd be back even with him again. He
had started drinking, and he gave away money when he was drinking. He called.
When I looked back at my hand, my kicker was a three ... and Bill had two
threes in the pocket. They held up and he won the title.
DS: What about your famous "mystery hand?"
TJC: 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. So, this is what I call my "mystery
hand" play.
DS: You seem to remember everything that has ever happened in
the games you've played. Do you keep a book on your opponents?
TJC: No, it's nothing that formal. It's more like pages opening
up in a book in my mind. 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.
DS: Is that how you get a line on the other players?
TJC: 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 sone 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.
DS: You call that kind of knowledge "being the recipient of
their generosity." How so? TJC: We're just like leopards -- we can't
change our spots. For example, I know a player who always brings it in for a
small raise when everybody has passed to him on the button; he never comes in
flat. But he's also a good enough player that he doesn't stand a reraise unless
he has a big hand. Knowing how he plays the button, you can make a lot of money
off this man when you're in the big or little blind by just popping him back
three or four times in a session. Obviously, you can't do it every time or
you'll get killed ... but you can tell when to do it. The thing about hold'em
is that if you're playing nine-handed and six players have passed to you on the
button, there's a pretty good chance that somebody behind you might have a hand
since nobody in front you does. It's what Tom McEvoy, the co-author of our new
book, calls "the bunching factor."
DS: Besides skill and observation, does luck play a part in
poker?
TJC: Of course, but it's not as big a factor as novice players
think it is. Speaking of luck, I'll tell you about the unluckiest player in the
world. There was this big card game years ago in a house down in Odessa or
Midland ... don't remember which. Nobody except a few notorious men from the
area could play in that game, and they were all what we called
"packing" in Texas ... they were armed. Seems that one guy accused
another one of cheating (which they were all doing) and the guns started
blazing. Two men were killed right there in the game, and another guy was shot
going out the front door. All of the houses were right next to each other, and
the people next door heard all the gun shots and called for the cops. So the
man that was shot in the doorway started pounding on the neighbors' door to ask
for help, standing there just bleeding to death. The guy opened up the door and
killed him with a shotgun, thinking that he was trying to break in. Next time
you think y
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