Bovada Poker Download Review

Bovada Poker: The Leader in USA Online Poker

Bovada Poker is part of the PaiWangLuo Network, which has the most traffic of any U.S.A. online poker site. From cash games to sit-n-goes and tournaments, you’ll find well-populated lobbies at Bovada.lv. This site is related to Bodog, the brainchild of billionaire Calvin Ayre, which has been in operation for close to two decades and has a sterling reputation in the online gambling industry.

Newcomers to Bovada can take advantage of a 100% up to $500 poker bonus without the need to enter a bonus code. There’s plenty of traffic in whatever game format you prefer, allowing you to clear this bonus with no problem no matter what type of poker you enjoy.

Some of the reasons why people appreciate Bovada’s services include its speedy payouts of winnings, the fact that there’s mobile and Mac poker software, and the presence of an attached casino, sportsbook, and racebook. This is thus a perfect gambling destination for many types of wagering in addition to poker, and you can use it on a wide array of computing hardware.

Click here to join Bovada and create your account today!

How to Begin the Bovada Poker Download Process

It’s a piece of cake to register your new account and get started on the tables at Bovada. Simply follow the steps below:

1. Click on our link to go to the Bovada Website
2. A registration form will appear on your screen as shown on the right
3. Fill out all the fields with your accurate personal info
4. When you’re ready, hit the red “Open Account” button
5. Click on any of the “Download Poker” links on the Bovada.lv website
6. An installation program will be downloaded to your computer
7. Open the installer and proceed through the screens until the application is installed
8. Launch the poker client and log in with your account credentials
9. Now you can play for play money. To sit at real money tables, follow our instructions for making a deposit below

Anonymous Tables

When you take your seat at Bovada, you’ll be identified solely by a player number, e.g., “Player 1,” “Player 2,” “Player 3,” et cetera. Your opponents will all have player numbers too, and they’re based on the seat they occupy in cash games and the order in which they registered in SNGs and tournaments.

This way of doing things means that nobody can track any other individual’s play over the long term. Sophisticated hand trackers, which pros use to heighten their edge, won’t work here. All information collected about a specific player’s strategy becomes useless at the end of the session.

Some people feel that this blunts one of the important components of poker – that is, getting reads on the other participants. However, this levels the playing field for those who don’t want to invest significant resources in dedicated third-party software applications. The aim is to cater to regular players, not serious professionals.

Bovada’s anonymized tables seem to be working as intended. Casual poker fans flock to the site, secure in the knowledge that they aren’t being preyed upon. The tables are notoriously soft, which benefits both newcomers and poker veterans alike.

Quick Seat

Bovada’s cash games don’t use a typical lobby system. Instead, you select the type of table you want (game, betting structure, table size, and stakes). Then, the software automatically finds a seat in a game corresponding to your preferences, and it places you therein. This arrangement was intended to let people quickly enter a game without having to fiddle with waitlists and lobby data.

The downside of Quick Seat is that sometimes it will put you at an empty table if there are no free seats in a game matching your criteria. The best workaround is to launch the Quick Seat function multiple times for similar formats of games.

For instance, if you wish to play 9-handed $0.25/$0.50 NLHE, you might choose that exact game description along with six-handed $0.25/$0.50 and nine-handed $0.10/$0.25. With any luck, there will be action going at one of the options you’ve chosen. Also, any empty tables you’re placed at will probably fill up before too long.

Hand Histories

The Bovada Poker application comes with a hand history viewer that lets you review past hands. You can open it up directly from a game by clicking a link shown on the table. So far, so standard.

What sets the Bovada hand histories apart is that after 24 hours have elapsed, you can view any hand you played WITH ALL HOLE CARDS REVEALED. The anonymous nature of Bovada’s games allow it to provide this service without compromising the privacy of any user.

One of the consequences of the availability of hand histories with complete hole card information is that collusion and other funny business becomes easier to detect. If you suspect something shady is going on at the tables, you can wait 24 hours and then see if players’ actions matched the strength of their hands. If your suspicions turn out to be valid, you can inform support, and the site will take the necessary enforcement steps against the parties at fault.

Table Customization

You can change the graphical look and feel of Bovada Poker according to your own individual tastes. You can select a table background, color scheme, deck style and more.

In addition, there are various animation options that can be enabled or disabled. They show special graphics whenever certain game events occur, like winning a huge pot with a monster hand. Some people find them silly, but others enjoy them. It’s up to you whether you want them to be shown or not.

Cash Games

There are ring game tables running from $0.02/$0.05 up to $10/$20 in NL Texas Hold’em, PL Omaha, and PL Omaha/8. There’s action around the clock in all three of these formats although certain stake levels of PLO8 are thinly populated at times. There are six-max, nine-handed, and heads-up games.

As far as limit goes, you can partake in LHE from $0.05/$0.10 to $30/$60 and LO8 from $0.25/$0.50 to $30/$60. Limit Omaha Hi is also present, but traffic is light.

You can play a total of up to four cash game tables at a time.

Zone Poker

Bovada was the first U.S.-friendly online poker room to offer fast-fold poker, which it calls Zone. In this rapidly paced format, players get a new hand at a new table whenever they fold. This speeds up the game immensely, and you can therefore see three or four times as many hands in a given period of time as you could in a normal ring game.

NLHE Zone is spread from $0.02/$0.05 up to $1/$2. PLO fun can be had from $0.02/$0.05 through $0.10/$0.25. There’s also a single Zone Poker pool for PLO/8 at $0.02/$0.05.

You’re allowed up to four Zone entries at one time, and up to two of them can be in the same pool.

Sit & Go

The SNG lobby at Bovada is fairly active. You’ll see buyin levels from $1.00 + $0.10 to $200 + $14.The games present are NLHE, PLO, and PLO8. A couple of LHE sit-n-goes are listed too.

Regular-speed, turbo and hyper turbos await your entry. Special Double Up and Triple Up games pay out the same amount of cash to everyone who makes the money. There are also Beginners SNGs that reward a larger than normal fraction of registrants. Nine-player, six-max, and heads-up sit-and-goes are common, and there are a few two-table and three-table contests too.

The sit n’ go table limit is four.

Jackpot Sit & Go

Jackpot Sit & Go is a randomized affair that combines regular poker gameplay with aspects of a lottery. Whenever one of these three-person events starts up, a multiplier is chosen randomly, and it can range from 2 times the buyin to 1,200 times the buyin.

Jackpot Sit & Go has a winner-takes all prize distribution except if one of the three top multipliers (1,200x, 240x or 120x) is hit, in which case all three players receive something. Jackpot Sit & Go has five buyin choices: $2, $7, $15, $30 and $60.

You’re allowed to register for as many as four Jackpot Sit & Go games at the same time.

Multi-Table Tournaments

Bovada’s weekly MTT schedule contains $1.5 million in guarantees, some of which cost hundreds of dollars to enter and others that require just a buck or two to join. The highlight is the Sunday $150 + $12 $100,000 Guaranteed event.

Throughout the year, there are plenty of tourney series, like the Black Diamond Poker Open and Golden Spade Poker Open. They typically consist of dozens of tournaments that hand out millions of dollars in prizes.

It’s possible to play up to 15 MTTs simultaneously at Bovada.

Bovada Mobile Poker

Bovada offers its users a mobile poker room that employs responsive web design to remain compatible with desktop browsers, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Virtually every system with a modern web browser will work.

Unfortunately, Bovada mobile only supports cash games and Jackpot Sit & Go. Tournaments and ordinary Sit & Gos can’t be played on this platform. Furthermore, you can only open up a single table at a time. Thus, poker on mobile is best viewed as an additional perk rather than a total replacement of the standard Bovada Poker download.