T.J. Cloutier attended the University of California at Berkeley on a baseball and football athletic scholarship. He was later drafted into the army where he began to refine his poker game. Upon leaving the army, he played for the Montreal Allouettes in the Canadian Football League and was then traded to the Toronto Argonauts. Canadian football is at least as rough as the American game; T.J. had some experiences that, if not quite wild Texas poker shootouts, are not for the faint of heart. Once when he was playing for the Alouettes, he got elbowed in the face and three of his teeth were crushed. He recalls, "Two of my teeth went through my lip. They sewed my lip up right there on the sideline, and then I had to go back in and play the rest of the game."

Eventually, T.J. was sidelined from football due to knee problems. After working a short time in the oilfields near Longview, Texas, he moved to Shreveport, L.A., at which time he started to play poker in earnest, traveling to Dallas three times weekly to play Pot-Limit games.

He then progressed to tournament play in Las Vegas. It is no small testament to his acumen that he is the third all-time money winner in the World Series of Poker with total winnings from the event adding up to $2,992,841, so far.

T.J. has written four books on poker with Tom McEvoy and frequently writes poker articles for CardPlayer.com.

T.J. is famous for having once won with a "Mystery hand." Here is his explanation: "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."

Mr. Cloutier is most famous, though, for his elephant's memory. He says of the phenomenon: "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."

He can also recount no small number of colorful poker anecdotes, including this one, which makes his having lost three teeth in football look like a needlepoint convention in Pasadena. "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 gunshots 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 you're having an unlucky day in poker, just think about this guy!"

T.J. has an attitude towards poker that others who wish to emulate his success would do well to heed. He advises, "If you don't learn something new every time you play poker, then you aren't doing your job."