About Billy Boyd
| Name | Billy Boyd |
|---|---|
| Current Residence | Deceased |
| Birth Place | McNeil Ark., US |
Five-Card Stud hasn't been played at the World Series of Poker since 1974, when Billy Boyd took home the last of his four consecutive WSOP bracelets.
A victim of the surge in popularity experienced by variations like Texas Hold'em, the game recognized as one of the oldest forms of poker has fallen by the wayside in casino and tournament play.
Gone with it: the name of Billy Boyd, a poker revolutionary and perhaps the best Five-Card Stud player to ever sit at a table.
William Walter "Billy" Boyd was born in 1906 in McNeil, Arkansas. Details about his early life are scarce, but what is known is Billy took his last $13 to a poker table in a Montana bar one night in the late 1920s, and walked away with $1,300.
At some point after that, Boyd moved to Las Vegas where, in 1946, he was hired as director of casino operations at the then new Golden Nugget casino. Boyd would serve as card room manager for 36 years before the card room closed in 1982.
In his position at the Golden Nugget, Boyd oversaw and instituted a number of meaningful changes to the way poker is played. In 1950, he introduced the center-deal, in which a dedicated dealer distributed cards to the players while a button is passed to signify the theoretical dealer. Before this innovation, players were required to deal their own cards.
Boyd is also credited with popularizing the variation of poker known today as "Omaha." The game itself got its start in a home game in Coos Bay, Oregon, and in 1983 made its way to the Golden Nugget, where, as in most casinos, dealers would deal any card game so long as all at the table were in agreement as to the rules. Eventually, Boyd came over to watch and so liked the looks of the new game the next night he dedicated a table to the contest, which he called "Nugget Hold'em."
At around the same time, the World Series of Poker was being held at neighboring Binion's Horseshoe Casino, and players from the tournament would visit the Nugget just to get a taste of the new game, which had begun as a $5-$10 Limit game but had changed to $10-$20 Pot-Limit within the first few days. After the World Series, Boyd decided "Nugget Hold'em" was a game worth keeping, and it stayed in the poker room as a $2-$4 Limit game.
As the game grew in popularity the name was changed after one of the Golden Nugget's floor managers decided "Coos Bay Hold'em" or "Seattle Hold'em" were no good as names of poker games. Thus was Omaha Hold'em born, apparently after a native of the prairie city who happened to be sitting in on a game with the founders.
Incidentally, Billy Boyd's $2-$4 Nugget Hold'em game continued long after the demise of the Golden Nugget's poker room - when the casino stopped serving poker players after Boyd's departure in 1982, the game was moved next door to the Horseshoe Casino where it continues to be played today.
Boyd's tenure as card room manager at the Golden Nugget involved some of the happiest years of his life. A proud (albeit transplanted) Las Vegan, Boyd was thrilled to be a part of the casino industry and to have such a major role in the development of his casino. He loved the game of poker, and this love was apparent in the dedication he showed to not only his chosen game, but also to the more technical aspects involved in managing poker in casino play.
Aside from his contributions in the poker room at the Golden Nugget, Billy Boyd was widely known in the poker world as being one of the best Five-Card Stud players in the game. He can certainly be called the last of the great Five-Card Stud players; aside from Phil Ivey, who learned the game from his grandfather as a young child, today's breed of poker players are largely ignorant of what has become a dead form of poker.
In the early 1970s, however, Five-Card Stud was being played in the first World Series of Poker tournaments, and Boyd - who reportedly served as the inspiration for the character "Lancey Howard" in the Richard Jessup novel The Cincinnati Kid - was king.
From 1971 to 1974, Boyd, eschewing the Hold'em games occupying contemporaries like Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim Preston and Doyle Brunson, took every WSOP bracelet available in his field. He was known as a fierce and courageous Stud player who was extremely hard to read, and as his reputation grew it became apparent there were few in the poker world who could challenge Billy Boyd. In one WSOP tournament, Boyd faced no challengers for his bracelet - a sign of his strength, perhaps, but also a symptom of his game's fade into obscurity.
By 1975, the Binions had dropped Five-Card Stud from the World Series roster, a move that likely bothered no-one but Billy Boyd, who had amassed four bracelets and $80,000 during his reign of terror. Boyd would not win another WSOP bracelet in his career, and by the time he had been inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1981, had retired from playing the game professionally - a victim, like Five-Card Stud itself, of waning interest in the "old-style" of poker.
Boyd lived out his days as an extremely well-respected and fondly remembered part of poker history. He was dealt the ceremonial first hands at the new Golden Nugget and Mirage poker rooms and, along with such personalities as Benny Binion, Puggy Pearson, and Johnny Moss, was elected as one of the "Original Ten" members of the Seniors World Championship of Poker/Poker Player's Hall of Fame. Boyd survived into his nineties before succumbing to a series of strokes on November 21, 1997, at the age of 91.
Trivia
- Considered to be one of the best Five-Card Stud players in the history of poker
- Winner of four WSOP bracelets, all in Five-Card Stud
- Credited with popularizing Omaha Hold'em
- Managed the card room at the Golden Nugget for 36 years
- Elected to the Poker Hall of Fame in 1981