POKER PLAYER PROFILES

    Even though Dutch Boyd is not as well-known as some of the other players, he is one of the most controversial. He received a law Degree at the age of 18 and later ended up starting an online poker site - Pokerspot - which failed and caused customers to lose their deposits and is currently working on a new site - www.Rakefree.com - which is viewed skeptically by most.
    He grew up mostly in Missouri with his mom and younger brother. Dutch and his brother were both very intelligent and had always scored well on IQ tests. When he was 11, he skipped a couple of grades and soon after started taking college classes and then graduated with his Associates degree at 13 and his Bachelor's degree soon there after. He then decided to go to law school but later decided he didn't want to be a lawyer because most of the lawyers he worked for didn't seem to be happy with their jobs.
     Like many of todays players, he started to play poker after watching Rounders because the character in the movie was in the same position he was in - a law student who wasn't sure he wanted to be a lawyer. After watching the movie he started playing online at a play money site where he did well. He then graduated to real money games and spend some of his winnings on poker books to educate himself and improve his game. The online sites that he played at were very slow at the time so he decided that he wanted to start his own online poker room with the help of his brother who had a background in technology. Although he though the venture was a sure thing, his inexperience and over-optimism became problems.
     There were many things that went wrong. First, the market had changed a lot. Paradise Poker, one of the most respected online sites today, was up and running with a good software platform and PokerSpot didn't have any money for marketing or back-office operations. Things turned around temporarily before completely falling apart. The company that was processing all of their credit card deposits had supposedly ripped them off and because of this, they had no way of paying cashouts. It was big disaster.
     They filed a lawsuit and tried to get their money from the company that supposedly ripped Pokerspot off but they didn't have any money. They tried to sell the business since they had some assets, a userlist of about 8500 players, good software, and a pending patent for the online poker tournaments they developed and they got an offer from an online casino who eventually backed out of the deal.
     Another major event in his life came unexpectedly this year when he finished 12th in the 2003 WSOP. He went to Vegas for a meeting about his new site but the meeting didn't end up happening but he decided to stay in Vegas even though he didn’t have a lot of money but ended up winning a seat to the WSOP through a satellite. By the third day he was doing very well and was third in chips. Soon after that everyone knew who he was, and that opened up doors for him when it came to starting his new card room.
     Although Dutch says the failure was legitimate, many people believe that Dutch Boyd stole the money. Dutch says, however, would like to eventually pay back the lost money to the PokerSpot players to rectify the situation as well as fix his reputation but he understands that people are skeptical.
     The new site he’s working on is called RakeFree. It will be an online cardroom that doesn’t take a lot in rakes. He believes that poker sites do not need to be charging all the money that they do now to players because their costs are much lower than brick & mortar rooms because of automation. He is hoping the Pokerspot fiasco won't hurt the chances of success for his new venture and hopes that his partial success and the lessons he learned from his failures will win investors over and silence his many critics.

Poker Player Profiles