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Poker legend TJ Cloutier shares tales from the poker trail.
Anybody who sees me at a poker table says that I look like a football player. And of course, that's what I was in my youth. After I got out of the Army, I signed on as with the Montreal Allouettes, where I played first string tight end until I was traded to the Toronto Argonauts. Thirteen Americans were suited up, along with 17 Canadians.
My value was that my father was born in Canada, so I could play as a Canadian-an American-trained Canadian was just what they were looking for. It's a rugged brand of football, wide open. When I was playing, you couldn't block for a pass receiver once he caught the ball past the line of scrimmage. The field was 110 yards long, the end zones were twenty yards deep, and the field was wider. You had to make a first down in the first two downs or else kick the ball, since there were only three downs. It was a real fast game, and everybody was in motion all the time.
You couldn't block for a punt receiver; once he caught the ball, he was on his own. You had to give the punt receiver five yards to catch the ball. So, the other team would circle him like the Indians circling the settlers, and as soon as he caught that ball, he was dead, flatter than a pancake.
I played Canadian football for five years, until my knees gave out. When I left Canada, my father and my brother-in-law and I started Bets Quality Foods, an acronym for Bill, Ed, and Tom (my first name). We used the money I had left from football and my dad's retirement to start the business. Our slogan was 'Your Best Bet in Quality Foods.' We bought a huge freezer from a big cafeteria chain when they went out of business and rebuilt it in our warehouse to handle our frozen food. We had a big egg business, too, although you don't make much money from eggs. But when you're serving big hotels, you have to give them the eggs at a good price to keep their other business. I was working 16 hours a day-I would take orders, load trucks, and pick up and deliver products. Later, we merged with A&A Foods, and they stole us blind. My dad won an 11-count court case against them, but the owners left the country and he never got a nickel.
So, I started delivering bread for Toscana and eventually wound up as night manager for Wonder Bread in San Francisco. Making a long story short, I ended up heading for Texas with $100 in my pocket. That was in 1976. I went to work for six months as a derrick man on the oil rigs down there, and on my off days, I played poker. Pretty soon, I was making more money at poker than I was on the rigs. I'd been freezing up there anyway, so that's how I moved into playing poker full time. But of course I'll always be a big football fan.
I haven't been to a Cowboys game yet here in Dallas at their new digs, the expensive stadium they just built, but they're looking a lot better after a slow start. And after just three weeks of play, three division champions from last year got off to a slow start, too. Tampa Bay, Tennessee and Miami all started with 0-3 records. That's never happened before. Just shows you how parity and scheduling play a part these days.
It's surprising that the Jets are playing as well as they are this year because of their schedule. The teams they've played and beaten so far are all pretty good. But despite a tough schedule, they're off to a great start, even with a rookie quarterback, Mark Sanchez from USC, who a lot of us think is the best of the new lot of QBs. In the Heisman race last year, Sam Bradford from Oklahoma won it, but he and the two runners-up all stayed in college this year. It'll be quite a class coming out next year, for sure, although Bradford got hurt early in the season.
The Cowboys looked good in their first game, they should've won the game their second week (but Tony Romo played such a bad game), and the third week they looked great again. Last week they squeaked out a game against Denver. I hope they eventually find a leader for the Cowboys, because I think they have the most talent in the whole league. It's just a question of putting it together. And I hope they do, especially playing in their huge new stadium-they had 105,000 fans at their home opening-and 90,000 for their Monday night game. The old Texas stadium only held about 50,000. In fact, I've heard that you could fit four or five stadiums the size of their old stadium inside this new one!
Joy and I paid the $15 per head to tour the new Cowboys stadium, and I can tell you without a qualm that it is fabulous. On the level where the real expensive seats are, between the lower levels and the box seats, a beer costs you $9, but if you go up two floors, that same beer is $7. Go figure. The tours were conducted for about a month before the season started, averaging between 4,000 and 5,000 tourists a day-at 15 bucks a head. Can you imagine how much money they were making just off the tours? Plus, you started in the gift shop and you had to come back through the gift shop. Jerry Jones is nobody's fool, that's for sure!
That about wraps it up for this week. This is T.J. signing off from Texas to the world while watching the Cowboys on TV and playing a no-limit tournament online.
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