The Big Texan and The Games in Dallas

Poker legend TJ Cloutier shares tales from the poker trail.

From 1981 until 1992, I played no-limit hold'em in Dallas from noon until 5:00 p.m. every Monday through Friday, and from 7:00 p.m. to midnight or later five days a week. On Sundays, I drove to Shreveport to play pot-limit hold'em. I was putting in 60 hours a week, and sometimes 80, playing no-limit and pot-limit poker during those 11 years. Players used to come from all over the nation to play in our game at a place that I'll call "The Big Texan's." His house had the best food and the cleanest environment you could ask for, and it was a safe game.

All the road gamblers came to play in the game-Willie Struthers, Berry Johnston and Steve Melvin drove in from Oklahoma City, Garland Walters came in from Kentucky, Gene Fisher from El Paso, Bobby Baldwin, Buddy Williams, all the best players. That game was a great training ground in no-limit hold'em. Tom McEvoy also came in from Vegas to play with us. "I lost about $15,000 playing no-limit hold'em in that game," he told me, "but I won $40,000 at pot-limit Omaha. Until then, I thought I was a no-limit hold'em player-boy, did I learn a few lessons! People that I'd never heard of before were some of the best players that I had ever seen."

The Big Texan was a whale of a man and he ran the best game in Dallas-but he was one of the most disliked men there, too. I'm a very calm person, but there were three times in those 11 years when I almost stood up and let him have it. I never touched him, though, because I knew that this was a game in which I could make a lot of money and I wasn't going to get shut out of it.

One night we were playing no-limit hold'em and I raised the pot $200 with A-Q suited. The Big Texan called it. It got around to Walter Jones, and he put in his last $400. This was a legal raise because the raise in no-limit hold'em has to be double the amount of the original raise. I decided I was going to shut the Big Texan out of the pot so I came back over the top with $2,000 to get head-up with Jones.

"That's not a raise," the Big Texan said.

"The hell if it's not," I answered. "It's as legal as it can be."

Everybody at the table was agreeing with me, when the Big Texan just reached over and slapped me on the hand. Well, I reared up and I was really gonna let him have it because I never cared for him one iota anyway. But I thought better of it because I needed that game; it paid all my expenses for the year. Of course, the raise stood and he threw his hand away.

"If you'd hit me," he told me later, "I would've gone for my gun."

"Buddy," I said, "if I'd hit you, you'd never have had a chance to pull that gun on me!"

The Big Texan was always afraid that the money would leave Dallas. When I was still just dating my wife Joy, he called her and said, "How come you let T. J. go out to those tournaments? Don't you know that he could lose all his money in those things?" He's the same one that said he was going to drop the latch on me after I'd won 12 times in a row in his game.

"You're beating these boys too bad," he said, "and I don't want that money going back to Louisiana. But if you'll let me have half of your play, you can keep on playing here."

So for the next 11 games, the Big Texan was in on my action and we won all 11 times. On the twelfth night, he said, "I'm out today." A bell started going off in my head: I knew something was gonna go down in the game that day. There were a few strangers from Oklahoma in the game that I'd never seen before. So, I just bought in for $500 instead of the usual $1,000, played for about an hour, and left. And the Big Texan never came in with me again.

There were a ton of good players in Dallas in those days. In fact, if you could beat the Dallas game, you could beat any game, including the World Series of Poker.
When the World Series was going on, the poker game in Dallas would shut down. The same thing happened during Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker and the Stardust's Stairway to the Stars because a lot of us Dallas players entered them. As the result, I became well versed in tournament play.

I'm on the road again this weekend heading for Las Vegas. Be sure to say hello if you're in Sin City. Till then this is TJ signing off from the games in Dallas to the world.


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