By Neal Farran | August 29, 2007

Bodog players must have wondered about the website problems in the past few days – was it just an upgrade? A server crash? Had Bodog been hacked?

The truth came out, and as Bodog was once again available as www.newbodog.com this is what Calvin Ayre had to say regarding the outage:

Welcome to the new (temporary) Bodog. As you may know by now, Bodog.com is experiencing a technical issue impacting our players' ability to access our website.

This is the result of a legal dispute over the ownership of the Bodog.com domain name. We are fighting this dispute. We are confident that we will win, but until all is settled, I do not want our battle to interrupt your play.

So, I present you with newbodog.com. You won't notice very many changes: same website, same brand, same product, and same service. Just a new domain name.

We are working to resolve any remaining issues on the temporary site as soon as possible, and fully expect to have our original site back up shortly.

I sincerely apologize if you were affected by our interruption and assure you that I will update you soon.

It later became known that Ayre had been sued for patent infringement by 1st Technology Inc. Since Bodog failed to appear in court, the King County Washington Court issued a default judgment, awarding the plaintiff $48.9 millions in damages and the removal of all DNS servers associated with Bodog. Ayre seems determined to fight this, although a potential licensing agreement may loom in the future.

Stay tuned for further developments on the Bodog domain saga!

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