Piece of cake!

Cake Poker, which operates 55 online poker rooms, has purchased a World Series of Poker (WSOP) championship bracelet that was once owned by T.J. Cloutier and which was put up for sale last month on the online auction site eBay (www.ebay.com).

A spokesman for Cake said the online poker room operator made the purchase as a charitable gesture and will return the bracelet to Cloutier.

Cloutier earned the 14-karat gold, diamond-studded bracelet at the 2005 WSOP by winning a $5,000 buy-in, no-limit Texas hold ‘em tournament that had 467 entrants and a top prize of $657,100.

Cloutier recently pawned the bracelet at a pawn shop in Plano, Texas, USA, where he lives.

When he failed to redeem the item in time, the shop put the bracelet on eBay, with a starting bid of $2,999.

Cake then bought the bracelet for $4,006.

When an Internet radio show called Cloutier to interview him about the bracelet, he told the show’s producer: “I don’t want to talk about it. Yeah, it’s mine. I was short. I pawned it. I tried to get it back with my ticket, but I was too late.”

In a posting made on the Cake Poker blog, a Cake rep wrote: “Since winning the bid and celebrating wildly, we have taken some time to reflect on our glorious new prize.

“As much as we would love to have a WSOP bracelet, or even award it to one of our cherished poker players, 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 T.J. Cloutier just as soon as we have some fun with it.”

According to official tournament records, poker pro Cloutier has won $9,644,900 in his career playing offline tournament poker.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)