#818 – 2009 WSOP #76 – Seen & Heard #22 – The Dangers of Being Chip Leader on Day 1

Experienced poker players will tell you that no one really wants to be the chip leader after the first day of the Main Event. Day 1 position has little relevance to the final results and just creates a lot of extra attention and pressure. Imagine how Eric Cloutier feels right now.

Eric was initially reported as the chip leader for Day 1-A (Friday). Because his reported total of 150,750 was not surpassed on Day 1-B, it looked like he was the leader for Day 2-A. When I was at Phil Gordon’s Independence Day Party on Saturday, I overheard many people talking about about Cloutier. I’ve never met him but I kept hearing phrases like “felony charges” and “Lafayette, Louisiana” and “tax evasion.”

I looked it up online and, yeah, he is looking at some serious charges. Last January 27, the Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control issued a press release announcing they arrested Cloutier on a total of 505 charges related to tax evasion, fraud, and money laundering.

Who knows if the charges, in whole or even in part, are true? But tax evasion is what they put Capone away for, and Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down by the law in Louisiana, so you have to be careful messing with the government down there.

That’s not even the worst of it. On Sunday, the WSOP issued a correction to the media. “It turns out the chip leader from Day 1A [Eric Cloutier] has been verified to have 15,075 chips, not 150,750 as has been reported by us. We apologize for this unfortunate error. We take full responsibility. As such, Cloutier should be replaced as the current chip leader with BRANDON DEMES, who finished Day 1B with a verified 137,075 in chips.”

The whole mix-up has probably brought Cloutier a lot of unwanted attention. The only silver lining is if they also replace Cloutier with Demes in that Louisiana criminal case.

• No Related Post