Bovada.lv General Overview
Representing Bodog in the United States, Bovada.lv is operated by Meadway Leisure Limited, a company recognized for its high level payout services and its strong presence in both the sports betting and gaming industries. Like many other gambling websites, Bovada offers an online casino, poker room, sportsbook and racebook. Unlike many other gambling websites, Bovada.lv welcomes US-based gamblers. Also dissimilar to other sites, Bovada provides its poker players with a gaming experience that other websites can only struggle to replicate.
Introduced by Bodog last year, Bovada has quickly become a favorite destination for many US poker players and for good reason. Bovada gives people the chance to play free poker online and the opportunity to play for real money. If someone is interested in playing in a cash-based game or tournament, the individual will have to download Bovada’s poker client, however.
Bovada allows a player to deposit up to $5,000 in his or her account in a single transaction depending on whether the individual uses a Mastercard, Visa or American Express credit card, Rapid Transfer or MyPaylinQ. Bovada allows a player to withdraw any amount the person wants to in a single transaction, up to the full amount of the individual’s account balance.
Bovada.lv Cash Games
With 1,000 or so people playing poker at Bovada.lv during its prime hours, Bovada hosts a myriad of cash games at any given moment. Even though Texas Hold’em is the website’s most popular poker game, Bovada offers players the chance to participate in other games as well, including Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo, 7-Card Stud and 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo. No-limit ring games have blinds as low as $0.02 and as high as $20 while limit ring games have blinds ranging from $0.05 up to $60.
Bovada.lv Tournaments
Bovada offers a wide selection of tournaments that will appeal to novice and seasoned poker players alike regardless of their respective bankrolls. Bovada.lv currently schedules the following types of tournaments on a regular basis: multi-table contests, freerolls, Poker Point tourneys, qualifiers, multi-table Sit n’ Gos, short-handed Sit n’ Gos, re-buy contests, beginner Sit n’ Go tournaments, beginner scheduled tourneys, shootouts, heads up contests, quadruple up tournaments, single rebuy tourneys, ante-up contests, add-on only tournaments and knock-out tourneys.
Depending on the type of tournament a person chooses to participate in, the individual may be able to use his or her Poker Points to purchase a Tournament Ticket to gain entry into the event instead of having to pay using money. Whether a person is able to win cash or other prizes, such as free entry into a successive tournament or Player Points, is also determined by the type of tournament a person plays in.
Bovada.lv Software & Interface
Bovada’s software offers players many of the features they are used to using at other poker websites. Players can chat, sort through cash games and tournaments in accordance with their preferences and review their personal hand histories, for example.
Bovada’s poker client also enables players to compete in multiple contests simultaneously. Players competing in ring games and/or Sit n’ Go tournaments can play at up to four tables at the same time. People who participate in multi-table tournaments instead, are able to play at up to 20 tables at once.
Bovada’s software also enables poker players to review and download complete hand histories pertaining to the tournaments and cash games they participate in. This means that people can see the hole cards that were dealt to other competitors during each hand played in a particular contest. These full hand histories are made available to players 24 hours after a contest ends.
Bovada.lv Bonus & Promotions
The bonus that Bovada extends to new players makes it hard to deny that the website genuinely appreciates people who play poker at Bovada.lv. At present, Bovada offers a 100% Up to $1,000 Welcome Bonus to its new poker players. A person only has to do three things to take advantage of Bovada’s Welcome Bonus: download the website’s poker software, open an account and make an initial deposit into it. The total amount of money that a person puts in an account on the day it is opened, up to $1,000, is used to determine the bonus amount the individual is eligible to receive regardless of how many separate deposits the person made to reach that total.
A poker player has 60 days from the time he or she makes an initial deposit to earn as much of Bovada’s Welcome Bonus as possible. Bovada releases an individual’s bonus in accordance with the number of Poker Points the person accumulates within the prescribed time period. A person must accrue enough Poker Points to make it to the next level of Bovada’s payment schedule to receive additional portions of the Welcome Bonus. The payment schedule Bovada uses to determine how much of the Welcome Bonus a person will receive based on the number of Poker Points he or she has earned is as follows:
| Level |
Poker Points |
Bonus Increment Issued |
Total Bonus Issued |
| 1 |
50 |
$10 |
$10 |
| 2 |
250 |
$40 |
$50 |
| 3 |
750 |
$100 |
$150 |
| 4 |
1,500 |
$150 |
$300 |
| 5 |
3,000 |
$300 |
$600 |
| 6 |
5,000 |
$400 |
$1,000 |
People can earn Poker Points in two ways: by contributing to the rake in a ring game and by paying fees to play poker in tournaments. When someone contributes between $0.05 and $3.00 to a rake, the individual will receive between 0.1 and 1 Poker Point. An individual gets three Poker Points for every $1 he or she pays to participate in a tournament.
Once a person’s deadline to collect Bovada’s 100% Up to $1,000 Welcome Bonus passes, the individual can convert his or her Poker Points into Tournament Tickets to participate in certain freerolls and qualifiers. Typically, 100 Poker Points converts to $1 that can used to purchase a Tournament Ticket. Bovada allows people to convert up to 5,000,000 Poker Points per calendar month.
Bovada.lv Customer Support
Bovada provides support for its visitors 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days per year. People can get assistance by initiating a live chat with one of Bovada’s knowledgeable representatives or by completing a webform.
In addition to making a toll free telephone number available to American gamblers looking for general assistance, Bovada has toll free numbers dedicated to providing support to anyone looking for help with its individual channels. Poker players can call 1-866-909-2237 to receive help with issues related to Bovada’s poker channel.