BOVADA POKER REVIEW

Bovada. It’s a name that anyone who’s been a part of the online poker scene in America will have heard of, for it is, put frankly, one of the biggest names in the US poker market. It is one of the best real money poker sites, thanks to its willingness to innovate and deliver a top-tier player experience.

It’s no shock that I’ve already played on Bovada in the past, but this time I truly wanted to do a deep dive and give it the full, top-to-bottom review. I tried everything: the anonymous cash game tables, the jackpot Sit N Gos, and the vast tournament offerings.

As well as game testing, I looked at other important areas of the site, like bonuses, promotions, customer support teams, and available banking options. Everything that I thought you would want to know is here.

I’ve been in the poker industry for over a decade, and through it all, Bovada has remained a name on my “list,” and for a good reason.Bovada. It’s a name that anyone who’s been a part of the online poker scene in America will have heard of, for it is, put frankly, one of the biggest names in the US poker market. It is one of the best real money poker sites, thanks to its willingness to innovate and deliver a top-tier player experience.

ABOUT BOVADA POKER

Bovada Poker Room is a popular online platform for playing poker that was launched in 2004, during the early stages of the poker boom. Although it faced challenges after Black Friday, Bovada made a comeback after being acquired by Ignition in 2016 and reintroduced in the following year with its own proprietary software that is well-known for its visually appealing black and red design.

The poker room has earned a reputation for its player-friendly policies and soft games, making it an attractive option for recreational players seeking to improve their skills and potentially win big. Overall, Bovada Poker Room is a trusted and enjoyable platform for poker enthusiasts of all levels.

BONUS AND PROMOTIONS

Everyone loves getting something for nothing, and poker sites have realized that they can attract players by offering increasingly generous bonuses and promotions. Bovada is no exception, as it offers its players a welcome bonus and in-game promotions to keep them at the tables.

POKER GAME SELECTION

Bovada Poker offers three poker variants for its cash games and tournaments – Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and Omaha Hi-Lo. While this may seem limited compared to some other sites, Bovada more than makes up for it in other areas.

The quality of the games is top-tier, both in terms of traffic and how easy it is to make bank. Thanks in part to Black Friday, American operators have been shut off from the rest of the world. As a result, their games play much softer than their more international counterparts.

Moreover, the site was one of the first–and still one of the only–poker rooms to offer fully anonymous tables. As such, there’s no danger of being exploited by players who have built up a significant hand sample on you (among other benefits).

CASH GAMES

Bovada offers for cash games are Hold ’em, Omaha, and Omaha Hi-Lo. Those games are available in No-Limit Hold ’em, Limit Hold ’em, Pot Limit Omaha, Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo and Limit Omaha Hi-Lo. The games have three different table sizes: heads-up, 6max, and 9-handed games available. The games run in size from $0.02/$0.05 to $10/20 for the big-bet games such as NLHE and PLO, whereas the fixed limit games will go as high as $30/$60. Larger games can be opened on request, but action rarely runs higher than these limits.

Unlike other poker operators, Bovada doesn’t feature a traditional poker lobby. Instead, players simply choose the game, stakes, and table size and are seated at a table via the “quick seat” feature. They will then automatically be seated at a table that meets those requirements. This is an effort to eliminate the practice of “bum hunting,” where professional players only play at tables with weaker players or whales. This is a great addition and improves gameplay immensely. You do not have to wade through a long list of tables to find an open seat, but you avoid constantly running into sharks.

Bovada also has its own version of fast-fold poker called Zone. Instead of playing at a single table, you play with a pool of players that are constantly moving tables. When you join a game of Zone, you are randomly seated with 5-8 other players and immediately dealt a hand. Once you have folded or the hand reaches showdown (whichever comes first), you are moved from that table to another random table with different players. I love this format as it allows you to play upwards of 200 hands an hour, compared to around 50-80 you would play at a regular table. Action junkies rejoice!

SIT AND GOS

There are various sit-and-go formats at Bovada, including Turbo, Heads-Up, Regular, 6-player, 18-player, Double-Ups, and Triple-Ups. While these are mostly comprised of No-Limit Hold ’em games, there are Omaha options, although they run less often. The buy-in level for sit and gos varies from as low as $1 up to $200.

The site also offers a special type of sit-and-go called a Jackpot sit-and-go. Made up of three players, these feature a prize pool determined by a multiplier, which can range from 2 to 1200x your buy-in. The buy-in levels for the Jackpot sit & gos are $0.50, $2, $7, $15, $30, $60, and $100 – meaning that you can win a potential $120,000 if you hit the biggest multiplier! I put in a ton of volume in these games; the massive potential payouts for beating just two players are way too good to pass up.

POKER TOURNAMENTS

One of Bovada’s strongest assets is its extensive tournament schedule, with over $2m offered in guaranteed prizes every week. The majority of tournaments exceed this guarantee, meaning it’s likely closer to $2.2m in prizes each week! The jewel in its crown is the weekly Sunday tournament that has a guaranteed prize pool of $200,000 and a buy-in of $162. This is by far one of the most popular poker tournaments on the site, and it has a guaranteed first-place payout of at least $20K!

With entry fees ranging from $1 to over $400, Bovada has tournaments for everyone and all bankrolls. In addition, all tournaments have guaranteed prize pools that are repeated multiple times throughout the day, so regardless of when you play, you’ll be able to hop into a tourney. These tournaments include the Lucky Sevens tournament, a $22 buy-in with a $7,777 guarantee; the Crazy Eights tournament, a $16.50 buy-in with an $8,888 guarantee and a $22 6-handed tournament.

Along with these repeating tournaments, there are also staples of the Bovada tournament schedule. These are limited to once a day/week and always have fantastic guarantees for their buy-in. Tournaments that fall under this bracket are the $55 Turbo tournament (up to $30,000 guaranteed), the $82 Knockout tournament (up to $10,000 guaranteed), and the $325 High Roller tournament (up to $75,000 guaranteed). You can easily find these tournaments in the schedule as they are highlighted in different colors.

Players have the option to try and earn a seat into these prestigious tournaments by participating in the many satellites that Bovada Poker offers. Buy-ins for these satellites can range from $1 up to $82 for the high-roller tournaments.

WHAT’S IT LIKE TO PLAY?

Before we take a look at the games available on the site and what it can offer in terms of welcome bonuses, let’s look at arguably the most important part of Bovada – what it’s like to play. Having a poker client that’s enjoyable to use is often underrated by most players, but when you’re regularly putting in multi-hour sessions, it quickly becomes apparent how important it is.

While there are certainly some great features implemented at Bovada that make the gaming experience enjoyable, there are areas where I think it could improve. Let’s start with the positives – the tables look great. The tables are what you’re going to spend most of your time looking at, and in that regard, there are no complaints. Everything is clear and easy to read, and you have a full range of customizable options for the felt color, background color, and cards.

However, the table options aren’t perfect – particularly when it comes to multi-tabling. The “Tile Tables” option doesn’t work in the same way as most other sites; instead of putting each table in small, individual tiles around your screen, Bovada overalls your tables in the middle of your screen. As you can see from the image below, it’s not ideal if you’re a mass multi-tabler.

Another issue you’ll run into if you’re a committed grinder is the lack of auto-top-up options for cash games. While you can set the amount you’d like to buy in for at each table, if you ever fall under that amount, you need to top up manually. This may not seem like too much of a hassle if you’re playing one table, but if you’re playing three, four, or even more, a lot of your time is dedicated to making sure you’re at 100bb rather than focusing on the games.

WEB VERSION VS. POKER CLIENT

One feature that Bovada boasts is the ability to play poker directly from its website without the need to download the poker client. This is perfect for people who want to get in a quick session on a different device and don’t want to wait to download and install the client. When playing from a web browser, you have full access to all the cash games, sit & gos, and tournaments you’d find on the poker client, so you don’t have to miss out on anything.

As you can see from the image above, the lobby is well laid out, if a bit basic. While I’d definitely enjoy the option of a dark mode, everything is clearly laid out and easy to find, so I have to give it props for that. Plus, the four icons at the top made it easy to keep track of when it was my turn to act when I was taking a closer look at the settings, so that’s definitely a positive.

MULTITABLING

However, one thing I was disappointed by was how the site handles multi-tabling. I thought that the four table icons at the top of the page would allow me to switch between tables as I was playing, but instead, whenever I opened up a new table, it would be squeezed next to the tables I already have open. You can see below how much that impacts your ability to see what’s going on – even on a large monitor, it can be hard to read all of the small bits of text on the screen, so an option to switch between tables would be a welcome one.

POKER CLIENT

In comparison to the web lobby, the poker client looks much nicer thanks to its dark theme and compact layout. While the lobby and the tables look great, there are areas that I would like to see improved in future updates.

For some reason, the poker lobby doesn’t have a full-screen option, which isn’t ideal if you struggle to read smaller text. I’d also like to see a change to the way the selection tabs are laid out – the vertical list of gaming options and the list of filters to the right-hand side doesn’t seem as intuitive as a completely vertical layout.

While playing on the poker client, I found the general playing experience to be good, but I felt it was missing some quality-of-life features that I’ve grown used to playing on other sites. One of the biggest features it’s missing is the ability to edit the betting buttons. When it’s your turn, you can select your bet size by using the scroll bar, typing in your bet, or using one of the dedicated betting buttons. On most sites, you can change these buttons to whatever you like, making it easier to use your most common bet sizes, but on Bovada, you’re stuck with the ones you’re given.

Not being able to auto-top-up when playing cash games is an issue that is also found in the poker client and becomes an annoyance after a while. There also isn’t a way to get the software to remember the table layout you last used, so if you’ve perfectly lined up four tables for your multi-tabling cash session, you’ll need to set that up every time you start playing.

However, that being said, a lot of these issues can be considered minor, and the overall gaming experience at Bovada is a good one. Unless you’re a serious poker grinder, you probably won’t even notice these issues. The important parts of the site look great, and the software is generally easy to use and has little to no lag.

FEATURES OF THE SITE

Now that we’ve got a feel for what it’s like to play on Bovada and the games they have available, what are some of the key features that make it such a cool site? Let’s take a closer look at what Bovada has to offer you.

WHAT IT’S MISSING

While I believe that Bovada is a high-quality poker room with lots of great features, there are some features that it’s missing that I believe would make it a much better site. Let’s take a closer look at what those are.

DEPOSIT AND WITHDRAWAL OPTIONS

Bovada has brought deposit and withdrawal options into the 21st century by including various cryptocurrencies. Players can make transactions using Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, and Litecoin. Of course, the site also has the standard options of credit/debit cards, bank transfers, and player transfers.

Deposits to the site are processed almost immediately, so there’s hardly any wait between depositing and playing. However, it’s a different story when it comes to withdrawing. Depending on your withdrawal method, it could be as fast as two hours or as slow as two weeks!

I found that the more modern deposit methods, like cryptocurrency and e-wallets, offered faster withdrawal times. I’ve created a couple of helpful tables to show you your deposit and withdrawal options, as well as any minimum/maximum limits that are enforced:

DEPOSIT

When depositing, you should be mindful of fees. The first deposit with one of Bovada’s accepted credit cards is free. Still, subsequent deposits will incur a hefty fee of 15.9%. In addition, your bank may charge an International Service fee of up to 3% on any transaction made with an international merchant. There are no fees charged by Bovada for cryptocurrency deposits.

WITHDRAWALS

Depending on the method you use to withdraw, you may incur withdrawal fees. Bovada will cover the fee for your first non-Bitcoin withdrawal every 90 days. Every additional withdrawal in those 90 days will incur a $100 (!!) processing fee. There are no fees charged for cryptocurrency or voucher withdrawals.

MOBILE GAMING

Whilst most online poker rooms have been expanded into the mobile gaming market by creating an app, Bovada has gone down a different route. Instead of an app that needs to be downloaded, taking up space on your phone, Bovada has created a mobile-optimized website that can be easily run from your phone. 

It’s really simple to use; just go to the website from your device, select the “Poker” tab, sign in with your login details, and you’re ready to start playing! Like the desktop site, the mobile site is very sleek in its appearance with a gorgeous black and red design. I found the site itself to be really easy to navigate, and it never took me long to find the games I wanted to play. When you’re sitting at the table, all the important buttons are clearly labeled, and there are no issues of important information being too small to see.

The site works with a wide range of mobile devices, so no matter whether you’re an Android or an Apple fan, you’ll be able to play. For those who are new to poker, there’s also the inclusion of play money tables so you can get used to navigating your way around the app before you play with real money. 

The full range of games is available when playing on Bovada from your mobile device, so whether you like playing cash games, tournaments, or sit & gos, you can play your favorite game. Plus, unlike some other sites, the full range of offers and promotions are available to players who use the mobile app to sign up.

CUSTOMER SERVICE OPTIONS

Bovada’s reputation for stellar customer service precedes it; in my experience, they live up to it. Their CS reps were super helpful in handling my queries/questions. They have three methods for you to contact them: email, live chat, and phone. The fastest way to get a hold of agents is by phone or live chat–I usually get a response within 10-15 minutes. However, times can vary depending on the volume of calls. If your query isn’t urgent, I recommend sending an email.

Phone: Speak directly with a customer service representative by dialing 1-888-263-0000.

Live Chat: Chat with a customer service representative using the “Chat Now” dialogue box on the right-hand side of the page.

Email: Complete the online form found here or email them directly at service@bovada.lv

WHAT MAKES THIS POKER SITE UNIQUE

There are a lot of great poker sites out there; why should you choose Bovada over any of those? One of the unique selling points of Bovada Poker compared to its competitors is its anonymous tables. Bovada was one of the first sites to implement it across all their games, and it has done wonders for the quality of their games.

Not being able to track a player minimizes the advantage professionals have over rec players. If you’ve ever felt like you’re always stuck playing the same regular sharks or you’re simply just tired of the same nits hogging all the tables, this is the perfect site for you.

Another great feature that Bovada has is its Quick Seat feature. Rather than your typical poker lobby, where you have to go through the tables before you take a seat, Bovada allows you to jump right into the action at the click of a button. It’s effortless, and it’s effective.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS

This site has so many fantastic features, from its sleek, easy-to-use software to its anonymous tables and rec-friendly atmosphere. I really enjoyed the anonymous tables, as they allowed me to make outlandish plays without worrying that the regs could target me in the future. The tournament series was always full of huge guarantees, so I always found them worth playing. On top of all that, I think it has a beautifully designed, mobile-optimized website.

Toss in a generous welcome offer and new promotions, and it’s a no-brainer Bovada Poker is high on my list of recommendations.

With a range of deposit and withdrawal options and outstanding 24/7 customer support, it’s easy to see why Bovada is a favorite amongst veteran and beginner poker players. There are always plenty of games to play on Bovada.

Is Bovada not for you? Check out how other poker sites compare: