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Dutch Boyd’s run remains part of WSOP’s Main Event lore

Thoughts dart through the brain in rapid-fire succession. The questions are muddled, disjointed.

What if Chris Moneymaker folds his pair of threes, and PokerSpot doesn’t fail, and “The Crew” stayed together, and Dutch Boyd really did, like, take over the poker world?

It’s all enough to make someone feel … manic.

“Our universe is completely different. My life would be different. Chris’ life would be different,” Boyd said. “I think that if I would have played that (2003) Main Event and busted out on Day 1 — if I got it all-in with like kings against ace-king and an ace hit the turn or something — I don’t know that I would still be playing poker.”

Russell “Dutch” Boyd is poker’s butterfly effect, the player who nearly altered the course of the game before the boom of the mid-2000s.

Boyd never did take over the poker world. But he came close.

Thirteen years after he was a central figure in the World Series of Poker’s Main Event, the 35-year-old professional poker player living in Las Vegas will be in the field for the $10,000 buy-in No-limit Texas Hold ’em World Championship that starts at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Rio Convention Center.

The Main Event runs through July 18, with the final nine players returning Oct. 30 at the Rio’s Penn & Teller Theater for the three-day final table that will be broadcast live on ESPN and ESPN2.

“There’s a lot of people who have the chip lead in the Main Event for a day and then you never hear from them again,” Boyd said. “It’s easy to doubt yourself and think, ‘Am I a winner in this game? Was I ever beating the game? Did I just get lucky?’ One of the nice things about having multiple bracelets is you don’t have to doubt yourself so much anymore.”

Boyd was a child prodigy, and soon after graduating from the University of Missouri’s law school at age 18, he started PokerSpot with his younger brother Bobby in 2000.

The online card room beat most of the other sites to the market and was the first to offer tournaments and split-pot games, Boyd said. But the site’s credit card processor had its assets frozen in early 2001, and PokerSpot was unable to refund a reported $400,000 in players’ funds, forcing it to shut down that year.

“That failure has followed me throughout my whole poker career,” Boyd said. “PokerSpot’s like a tattoo. And it sucks.”

Boyd was committed to a medical hospital in Antigua after a manic episode in 2003 that he said was brought on by the PokerSpot fallout. A month later, he made a deep run in the Main Event.

Boyd was the chip leader when he played a memorable hand with Moneymaker, the eventual winner, who sniffed out Boyd’s bluff with a lowly pair of threes. After being eliminated in 12th place a brief time later, Boyd uttered his immortal phrase, “We are gonna, like, take over the poker world” before exiting Binion’s Horseshoe.

“After 2003, I realized that I was plenty capable of hanging with the best in the world,” Boyd said. “Even though I didn’t win that year, I knew that I wasn’t outclassed. So when I said that, the feeling coming in 12th was there’s no level to aspire to. We’re already there.”

Soon after, Boyd formed “The Crew,” a group of young poker pros that represented the new wave of online players. In 2004, “The Crew” combined to win three WSOP bracelets, but the group had gone its separate ways by the time “Rolling Stone” published an article about it in 2005.

“The Crew was a group of people in one time in one place,” said Boyd, who remains in contact with many of the other six original members. “It was kind of a media creation, really, when I think about it.”

Unlike many other members of “The Crew,” Boyd remained visible on the tournament circuit and won WSOP bracelets in 2006, 2010 and 2014.

He also waged an often-public battle with bipolar disorder and detailed many of his struggles in his 2014 book “Poker Tilt.” Boyd had his first manic episode in eight years in February.

In addition, Boyd was sued by Two Plus Two Publishing for cybersquatting and trademark infringement, and in 2012, he was ordered to pay nearly $60,000 in damages and attorney fees. He issued a public apology on the matter in 2014.

Boyd has cashed in every WSOP since 2009 and has five in-the-money finishes this summer to push his career WSOP earnings past $1.78 million. He just missed making the money Friday in the $1,000 buy-in WSOP.com Online event.

Boyd spends much of his time now streaming his tournament play online at Twitch and also is involved in the budding online business of poker staking.

Boyd may never take over the poker world, but he’ll always be a part of it. Even if it’s as an outsider.

“I still think that I’ve got a lot of years left in me in this game,” Boyd said. “There’s still a lot of enjoyment that comes from playing. The feeling of winning a pot and pooling in chips, that feeling never gets old. It’s still just as good as it ever was.”

Contact reporter David Schoen at dschoen@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5203. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidSchoenLVRJ

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