What Caused Cloutier to Sell his WSOP Bracelet?
Written by Matt W | Friday, January 29th, 2010
The question doing the rounds in the poker industry these past days has been: Why did TJ Cloutier sell his World Series of Poker bracelets on eBay? The poker pro has won over 60 major tournaments, including six WSOP bracelets and he is said to have won over $10 million in his long and illustrious career. As such, it came as quite a surprise when Cake Poker posted on its blog this week that it had picked up one of Cloutier’s bracelets for $4000.
Before we go further, even before this CompatiblePoker owner Roger Shriver learned of Cloutier’s financial problems in discussion about PicClub the poker deposit operator. Cloutier doesn’t own picclub but is supposed to be the “face” of Picclub.
Cake Poker first hinted on the purchase when it wrote that it had picked up “a cool piece of poker history.”
After discovering who the bracelet originally belonged to, however, Cake Poker decided that the most moral thing to do was return it to its rightful owner.
“We can’t, in good conscience, keep it from the man who rightfully won it; which is why we’ve decided to return it to TJ Cloutier… just as soon as we’re done having some fun with it,” said Cake Poker.
The bigger question is what drove Cloutier to actually sell two of his bracelets. According to one report he told a show producer that he didn’t want to talk about it but he confirmed that the bracelet was his because he was “short”.
“I tried to get it back with my ticket but I was too late,” he reportedly said.
There are now wild speculations about what really caused Cloutier to pawn such a sentimental piece of his poker career.
Some have said that selling a bracelet was justifiable since “they don’t exactly do much but collect dust, so why not get some value out of them?”
Others have said, however, that the problem may run deeper than that and Cloutier may have run into problems regarding his passion for the game of craps.
A 2006 blog written by pro poker player Terrance Chan about a craps session read: “T.J. has lost more money at craps than possibly any human being alive. Obviously he’s just a poor craps player and one should bet against him, not with him.”
Whatever the true story, it is somehow painful to see a great player such as TJ Cloutier reduce himself to having to sell his prized possessions over the internet.
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· Written by Matt W · Filed Under Poker News · Comments Off
