I saw Dutch Boyd yesterday

[Vintage]

badbeated me, he did

[slickpoppa]

Cool story Hansel.

[Slacker13]

Let me guess, you loaned him $20 bucks and he ran out the door. Typical.

[DesertCat]

I dropped 50 cents in his cup too.

[ToledoTommy]

He tried washing my car windows when I was at a stoplight, I gave him a bonus code to UB and sent him off.

[ed8383]

OMG you saw a thief!

[deacsoft]

[ QUOTE ]
I dropped 50 cents in his cup too.

[/ QUOTE ]

LMAO /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
badbeated me, he did

[/ QUOTE ]Did you stinkpalm him?

[BarronVangorToth]

Just last night at Foxwoods someone name-dropped me referencing that, I don't know, they knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who played someone who knew someone on The Crew.

I couldn't get my autograph book out quick enough as it was taking too long stacking up his chips.

Tell me you were Howard Lederer's roommate at college and I'll say that's a cool story and worth telling. But when it's five people removed from one member of The Crew ... um, no.

Oh, well.

Barron Vangor Toth
www.BarronVangorToth.com (http://www.BarronVangorToth.com)

[rerazor]

I was watching Gank play a tourney on stars the other night and he said "dutch boyd is a piece of [censored]", that hewas out of the crew, and it was all coming out in Rolling Stone in a couple months.

[Tyler Durden]

I've talked to Gank a few times, he also said bad things about DB and said he (Gank) left the crew.

[shant]

I think I missed something, why is Boyd hated on 2+2?

[italianstang]

The official position of all 2+2 contributors is that everyone on television, everyone who has won a big tournament, and anyone who gets mentioned in any context, ever, sucks ass. Makes it kind of fun though.

[Daliman]

[ QUOTE ]
The official position of all 2+2 contributors is that everyone on television, everyone who has won a big tournament, and anyone who gets mentioned in any context, ever, sucks ass. Makes it kind of fun though.

[/ QUOTE ]

Especially if that player is at a MINIMUM guilty of corporate malfeasance in the loss of several hundered thousand dollars of players money, at at a maximum, out and out theft.

Owes me $1700, personally. Worst known owed 56k.

I know you love glib answers and acting like you're in the know, but seriously, attempt to have a clue before answering a question.

[slickpoppa]

Here is Dutch's side of the story:

LAP: How did you fund your first online poker room venture?

Boyd: In a word, badly. We were very naïve in our understanding of what it would take to compete in the industry. We figured we could build the software in a couple of months, put a site up, and then just expect people to come. We managed to raise $50k from friends and family, and thought that would be enough.

Looking back on it, I think it’s amazing that we were able to even get the site live. We only had three developers working on the software, and all of them had other jobs that they were working to support themselves. It took us 9 months to develop the software, which was a minor miracle… and I think says a lot for how brilliant my little brother is, who did most of the software design. There are a lot of well-funded projects that I know of that have never even been able to get to the point where the software could go live.

LAP: There were some troubles with that first room you operated. What happened?

Boyd: There were lots of troubles with Pokerspot. First off, the market had changed dramatically in the 9 months it took us to get up and running. Paradise Poker released their software two months after we started the Pokerspot project, and they were worlds ahead of Planet Poker. They still had a lot left to be desired in their software, though, such as the hi-low games, spread-limit betting, and tournaments. We released our software in May 2000 and it was pretty much empty. We didn’t yet have tournaments, which would come a few months later. We didn’t save any money to market the thing, and we had a lot of difficulties running it. And we didn’t build any type of back-office management tools to help us run the thing… so we pretty much had none of the competitive advantages that we set out to have. We were running this little cardroom with hardly any players, and we were having trouble managing it. We pretty much were winging things like customer support and the financial side of things. Things like cashouts were all done manually, and we had no Customer Relations Management solutions… the first four months we were up, we were using Outlook Express to manage all of our customer support emails. We were very much over our head.

Things started looking up in September 2000, when we released our tournaments. We were the first online cardroom to offer online poker tournaments, and none of the other sites would catch up for a good 9 months (when Pokerstars released their software). This started drawing a lot of traffic to the site. We developed our back-office tools and things were going a lot smoother. By December, we were in third place behind Paradise and Planet and looking pretty good. We raked $100k that month and we were growing at an astonishing rate. People loved those poker tournaments. In January, we raked $160k. Things didn’t look like they were going to slow down. And we were finally starting to get to the point where we had a marketing budget.

That January, though, things fell apart. We were pushing all of the credit card deposits through a company called Net Pro Ltd. I met them a few times at the various gaming conferences. Back then, there weren’t too many ways to get money into an online gaming account (and this is still a major problem facing online operators). We couldn’t process credit card transactions like a retail business.

In the middle of January, Net Pro told us that they hadn’t gotten the funds that they processed for us (all of the credit card transactions from the middle of December until then) from their bank. They said it was a temporary problem, and that we’d just have to sit tight for a week while they work it out. At the time, it didn’t seem like it was going to be as big of a deal as it turned out to be. They assured us we’d be getting all of those deposits, and that it wouldn’t take more than a week or so.

Two weeks later, it became clear that it wasn’t a temporary problem at all. They stopped answering their phones and we were left holding the bag for 6 weeks of credit card deposits. We had several hundred cashout requests with no way of paying them out. And without new chips entering the system, all of the action on the site died very quickly.

There were about 1000 players who had money on deposit with us. Many of them were able to charge back their credit cards and at least not be on the hook for the money that they deposited. But there was no way to make good on any of the money that they had won. It was a big disaster.

LAP: Many people don't believe your story about the PokerSpot funds being kept from you. What do you have to say to the folks that believe you "took the money and ran"?

Boyd: I understand how people can blame me for losing their money, and think that the whole site was a scam to run off with a few hundred thousand in player deposits. And it’s pretty hard to explain to a customer that they aren’t getting their cashout because your site had problems with a business partner. Players don’t understand how complicated it is to run these online sites… when they make a deposit and it shows up in their account, it would make sense that the online site has their money in a bank account somewhere, when in reality that online site is depending on another company to make good on that purchase.

A lot of people naturally assume that I took all of that money and partied, buying a big house in the Carribean and breast implants for a blonde girlfriend. But that isn’t true. When Pokerspot failed, it ruined me. I didn’t have a way to pay my rent, I didn’t have a job anymore, and I had no idea how I was going to turn it all around.

LAP: What steps did you take to try and recover the money?

Boyd: The first thing we did was try and get our money from Net Pro. We filed a lawsuit, and did everything we could to pressure them into giving us the deposits. But it became pretty clear that they didn’t have the money. In law school, one of the first sayings that you learn is “you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip”. It means that if some 19 year old kid gets drunk and crashes his car into your house, sure… you can sue him. You can probably even with a few hundred thousand. But you’re not going to see any of it, since he doesn’t have any money. He’s judgment proof. With Net Pro, it was the same thing. They didn’t have any money to collect.

So after that, it became clear that we’d have to figure out another way to pay the players back. The only way I could see doing that was by selling the business. We had a few assets… a userlist of about 8500 players, some pretty decent software, and a pending patent for the online poker tournaments we developed. We shopped around a bit and had some offers. We finally agreed on an offer from a large Montreal-based online casino. They agreed to give us all jobs and $1 million for the software… $500k would be ear-marked to pay back the players. We moved up to Montreal and started working with them. About four months into the deal, they called us into their office and told us that they were no longer interested in paying back the player debt… they’d give us $300k for the software (which wasn’t nearly enough to pay back the players) and we could still have our jobs with them. We turned it down and decided we’d be better off trying to salvage some of the deals that we had turned down which would include paying back the Pokerspot players. By then, though, none of the old offers still stood. The original developers had to take other jobs, and without them being able to support the software, I was unable to find a buyer.

[Daliman]

yup, read it before, very familiar with it. I actually cut him some slack and buy most of his story.

[Rushmore]

Me too, except let's face it, even if you buy the story, it would be hard not to be offended by the following:

[ QUOTE ]
About four months into the deal, they called us into their office and told us that they were no longer interested in paying back the player debt… they’d give us $300k for the software (which wasn’t nearly enough to pay back the players) and we could still have our jobs with them. We turned it down and decided we’d be better off trying to salvage some of the deals that we had turned down which would include paying back the Pokerspot players. By then, though, none of the old offers still stood. The original developers had to take other jobs, and without them being able to support the software, I was unable to find a buyer.

[/ QUOTE ]

If $500K would have covered all of the debt to the players, $300K certainly would have gone a long way towards making everyone whole again. It's obvious there was a selfish motivation behind not accepting this offer.

It's like when you're sitting in a game, and you're stuck a rack, and there are some changes to the lineup, and the game actually gets tougher, but you don't leave, and you end up stuck three racks instead.

This is what shows you how much he cared about paying anyone back. If he'd have gotten hold of the $300K, there wouldn't have been nearly the scandal that developed.

Something rings untrue here. They ofered me $300K, I wanted to go elsewhere and get more, I went elsewhere, the offers weren't there anymore, and I got nothing from anyone.

OK. You're the worst businessman in the world. You could not foresee anything at all. You made every decision as poorly as it could be made, particularly where it came to servicing your clients.

And you're supposed to be some genious prodigy Mensa guy.

[Daliman]

Yeah, way back when i posted about this EXACT same thing. He should have DEFINITLY taken the 300k, realizing soon his software would be worthless. It's mainly because I'm sick of getting into all of it that I didn't elaborate. Let Stanger use the search function.


Also, I don't know if Dutch is Mensa. I think his educational "prowess" was more a function of an overeager home schooling mom, as his brother has a similar schooling cycle, yet they both just play poker. Yes JUST play poker. They both have law degrees I believe. COuld be doing lots more with themselves.

P.P.S. I am Mensa level IQ, but I don't join; seem too pompous and silly to me. ANd yes, i could be doing lots more with myself, but I'm lazy, and actually, I'm a stay-at-home dad too, watching the dalibaby.

[fsuplayer]

as his brother has a similar schooling cycle, yet they both just play poker. Yes JUST play poker. They both have law degrees I believe. COuld be doing lots more with themselves.

played with his brother some last weekend at the borg in the 2/5NL game. okay guy, but kinda lame looking.

dressed just like his brother, from the side burns, to the doorag. hell he even had an unlit cigarette in his mouth, gimme a break.

[bogey]

[ QUOTE ]

P.P.S. I am Mensa level IQ, but I don't join; seem too pompous and silly to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

And also the scores needed to get in are ridiculously low for a group thats supposed to be elite and [censored]. Come on a 162 or something like that on the lsat, why not just let everyone in?

[bogey]

yeh ive seen that guy a bunch if its the same one your talking about, i thought it was Dutch the first time i saw him, then just figured it was some douche look-a-like, how did you find out he was his brother? hmm, maybe i should talk to people more at the card tables, tend to just mind my own business..

[Rushmore]

[ QUOTE ]
Also, I don't know if Dutch is Mensa. I think his educational "prowess" was more a function of an overeager home schooling mom, as his brother has a similar schooling cycle, yet they both just play poker. Yes JUST play poker. They both have law degrees I believe. COuld be doing lots more with themselves.

P.P.S. I am Mensa level IQ, but I don't join; seem too pompous and silly to me. ANd yes, i could be doing lots more with myself, but I'm lazy, and actually, I'm a stay-at-home dad too, watching the dalibaby.

[/ QUOTE ]

We everyday 145 types just call everyone purportedly smarter than us either genious prodigy Mensa guys, or the preferred, less vulgar brainiacs.

[RiverTheNuts]

Ehh, ive been tested between 150 and 165, and I still suck at poker... IQ doesn't mean much once you're over about 130 and can hold an intelligent conversation

[Rushmore]

[ QUOTE ]
Ehh, ive been tested between 150 and 165, and I still suck at poker... IQ doesn't mean much once you're over about 130 and can hold an intelligent conversation

[/ QUOTE ]

Your a brainiac, and I'm one to.