Dutch Boyd
Russ Boyd, more commonly known as “Dutch” Boyd, was born in 1980. He was very intelligent, and scored a 23 on the ACT college entrance exam at the age of 12. Boyd decided to go off to college, and by the time he was 18 he had graduated from law school. However, Dutch Boyd had watched the movie “Rounders,” and now wanted to play poker instead of becoming a lawyer, which he learned from his internship was a tough and thankless job. Dutch Boyd went to the library and checked out the only poker book the library had. He started playing at online poker rooms and in casinos that didn’t check his age.
Poker sites weren’t very good back when Dutch Boyd started playing, so Dutch Boyd and his brother Robert decided to make their own poker room, PokerSpot. Their site was launched in May of 2000, but the brothers had used up almost all of their savings, and had none left for marketing or to hire people to help run the casino. The brothers were doing customer service and maintenance entirely on their own. However, their site started to make a profit and got a big boost in September of 2000 when they became the first online poker room to introduce poker tournaments. By December, PokerSpot was the 3rd highest ranked online poker room. The problems began in January 2001, when the site’s credit card processor told Dutch Boyd that they hadn’t processed any funds for the site since mid-December. The site had to shut down since they had no money to pay back the players who were requesting payouts. This left about 1,000 real money players unable to retrieve their winnings from the site.
Dutch Boyd managed to win his way into the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event. Boyd said that if he won he would payout all of the PokerSpot players, as he would finally be able to afford it then. However, Boyd finished in 12th, winning only $80,000. After the tournament, Dutch Boyd created “The Crew,” a group of young poker players who pooled their bankrolls together, got a cheap house, and played online while reviewing each other’s hand histories. The group has since disbanded, but there is a reality show planned to bring them back together.
Dutch Boyd won is first bracelet in the 2006 World Series of Poker, defeating Joe Hachem to win the $2,500 Short-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event.
I’ve played against Dutch Boyd in a few poker tournaments. His loose play gets him into trouble, but also allows him to catch people bluffing. You’ll typically see Dutch Boyd playing low quality hands such as 64 and 25, but they are almost always suited. Dutch knocked me out of the 2008 Bellagio Five Diamond Poker Classic, Event #13 with 2c5c when I held Ac10d. He turned his flush, we both checked, then I all-in bluffed the river hard and he called my bet, typically a losing play against a player such as myself.
