(poker) Poker Player sells himself on Ebay.

[SirFozzie]

Oh.. it's even better. It's that whiny bastard Dutch Boyd. Hey, if you win the auction to stake this guy in the tournament, why not ask him while you're at it if he ever plans to pay off the people he ripped off on his poker site.

How much do you want to bet he tanks the tourney just to piss off whoever wins?

[Sharpieman]

How did he rip people off?

[SirFozzie]

Here's an overview. Basically, at one point, it was like a pyramid scheme. He was taking the new players money and using it for the exiting players cashouts.

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.

[SirFozzie]

Oh.. here's someone making fun of the Dutch Boyd auction

Just like Dutch. Only.. smaller.

[SirFozzie]

Here's a good discussion on a poker blog between an unnamed person and 2004 WSOP Champion Greg "Fossilman" Raymer

http://www.liveactionpoker.com/artic.../boyd-int.html

is supposedly his side of the story about what happened earlier. I'd
like to know what is supposedly false in this story.

If its true, I don't see where he "stole" any money. It just sounds
like a cashflow issue that broke them when a business partner folded,
and the corporation couldn't pay off its debts, like often happens in
that situation.

What's factually incorrect with "his story"?

----------

I'm most likely wasting my time talking to another Boyd shill, or Boyd
himself in alias.

No, this type of thing does not happen every day in the business world.

Let's say you're going to set up a new business, as a general contractor.
You sell shares of stock in your new company to investors. You also sell
your business services to customers, who place orders with you to supervise
construction of their buildings. Whenever you sign a contract with a
customer, they are required to pay in advance for the work, starting with
10% immediately, and then they must continue to make advance payments in at
least an amount deemed sufficient to cover next month's expenses on your
part.

Now the company folds. At the time, you had 10,000 shares of stock
outstanding. You also had $100,000 in corporate debt, money or supplies
lent to the company. You also had $200,000 in advance payments, the money
of your customers which had NOT YET BEEN SPENT on their behalf. However,
this money was gone, because you had been using it to pay for the debts of
the corporation, that is, if you hadn't used the customer's money, the
corporate debt would've been $300,000 instead of $100,000.

The money lost by the stock investors, that happens in the business world
every day. The money lost by the banks and suppliers who lent you cash or
supplies, that happens in the business world every day. YOUR illegal use of
the customer advance payments for corporate debts, that is illegal, and
while it happens a lot more than it should, it does not happen every day.
The advance payments were made in trust, that money NEVER belonged to the
corporation, it was supposed to have just been held for use in making
payments for that customer's projects, as the money was spent on their
behalf.

That is what Dutch Boyd did. He took the money that player's had in THEIR
accounts, money that NEVER belonged to him or to Pokerspot, and used it to
pay debts of Pokerspot. Then, when Pokerspot folded, the player's money was
gone, and their was nobody or nothing left to repay them. That makes him a
thief.

I didn't ever play at Pokerspot, and didn't lose a penny. But many of my
friends did. If I ever enter a tourney and am at the table with Dutch,
well, I'll be stuck there. But he will know what I think of him.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)