Room: US Poker

Why We Prefer Bovada Over Others

While there’s still a lot of competition in the US online gambling market, the amount of high-quality operations is surprisingly low. For example, the luxury of being able to cashout your winnings is, as scary as it sounds, unavailable at many sites, and there’s only a short list of reliable sites. We rank Bovada as the #1 option for US residents, and here’s why:

• They deliver the fastest check cashouts in the US. Well, faster than any other US gambling site excluding the sites in states with legalized online gambling.
• They take care of customers. With both phone and e-mail support, this site delivers great experiences by putting a lot of effort into their customer support.
• They have great software. We consider their gaming software the finest in the US for both casino and poker games. Their instant-play versions and mobile games are especially good.
• They have a long history in the online gambling business. There are people behind Bovada’s operations that used to operate Bodog – a site that’s been in the business since early 2000. Some of the people have been in the business 15+ years.

Customer Service

Bovada’s customer service has always treated me well. You can contact them via phone support (1-888-263-0000) or e-mail support — I’ve never tried contacting via phone number, but if the quality of their e-mail support is anything to go by (fast replies and thorough answers), you’ll have a nice experience with their phone support as well.

Some people accuse Bovada of “not listening to its players.” In most cases, these are the players who complain about anonymous tables, not being able to join waiting lists, etc. All of those decisions were made with recreational players in mind, and since the site is now more enticing to recreational players, educated players should love the current situation even more instead of complaining (there’s a higher percentage of recreational gamblers to play against).

Bovada’s customer service is also perhaps the most active out of any online poker room in the world at participating in discussions at online poker forums (many of the top internet poker forums now have “Bovada Service” users who are there to answer any questions about the site). As incredible as it sounds, customers are sometimes getting answers to questions without even directly contacting them.

Deposit Options

Bovada offers two deposit methods:

• VISA Credit / Debit / Gift Cards.
• Moneygram (called “Rapid Transfer” at Bovada)

A card deposit is the easiest and fastest of Bovada deposit options. You need a Visa credit, debit/check or gift card that’s eligible for online and international purchases.

It’s worth noting that even if your card fulfills the criteria, the transaction is never certain to go through, which unfortunately is typical for gambling-related transactions in the USA. Netspend debit cards have had a high success rate lately, and the cards that you should stay away from are Greendot and Vanilla VISA cards.

There’s one negative with Bovada deposits: they charge a 4.9% fee for card deposits except for the first deposit. Betonline is the only other US poker site that charges for such transactions (6%). Take this into account when depositing to Bovada especially if you’re going for the minimum deposit, since even though they claim a minimum deposit limit of $20, in reality you have to deposit the minimum of $20+4.9%.

Minimum Card Deposit: $20
Maximum Card Deposit: $500

Rapid Transfer (the equivalent of Moneygram) is a handy way to deposit and withdraw money to and from Bovada.lv. It takes 15 minutes for a deposit and 24 hours for a withdrawal to arrive. By depositing $300 or more at a time and withdrawing max. once a month, Bovada takes care of all the transaction fees. (Otherwise deposit fees are $12-$20 and withdrawal fees $20-$60.)

Minimum Rapid Transfer Deposit: $10
Maximum Rapid Transfer Deposit: $800

Pros & Cons

Credit / Debit / Gift Cards:

• Fast, convenient and easy-to-use.
• No need to visit any live locations to send the money.
• A low minimum deposit limit ($20).
• Sometimes fail to work for gaming transactions.
• A 4.9% deposit fee (most credit card poker sites take no fees).
• Must cashout via a check (takes a couple of weeks).

Rapid Transfer:

• Fast and reliable.
• Rapid Transfer cashouts are processed faster than checks.
• You need to visit a live location to send the money.
• A relatively high deposit fee ($12-$20).
• A high minimum deposit ($100).

Cashout Options

Bovada.lv offers two withdrawal methods:

1. Checks
2. Rapid Transfer (the equivalent to Moneygram)

Your available withdrawal option depends on the way you deposited money to Bovada; if you made a credit card deposit, you can withdraw the money as a check (Bovada has the fastest check payouts out of all US poker sites); if you made a Rapid Transfer deposit, you can withdraw the money by using Rapid Transfer.

To be eligible for a withdrawal after having made a credit card deposit, you must complete the credit card verification form on Bovada’s website.

How to cashout from Bovada:

1. Select the payout method.
2. Enter the amount you want to cashout.
3. Confirm your address information.
4. Click ‘Request Payout’.

What are the withdrawal limits?

• For check withdrawals: $20-$3,000.
• For Rapid Transfer withdrawals: $100-$750.

Are there any cashout fees?
The first check withdrawal of each month is free. If you want to cashout more than once a month, the rest of the cashouts cost $50 each. (In case you make a deposit and then, without using the money, decide to withdraw it, Bovada may charge a fee).

Here are their Rapid Transfer cashout fees:

Cashout Amount	Fee
$100 – $199	$20
$200 – $399	$30
$400 – $599	$45
$600 – $750	$60

Payout Speed

Bovada.lv has the fastest cashouts for US players as of now (unless you live in Delaware, Nevada and New Jersey where you can order ACH cashouts at regulated online poker rooms). Bovada delivers checks in 1-2 weeks (recent reports indicate that they deliver these in 10 days) when many of their competitors take several weeks and some even months.

Rapid Transfer payouts take a maximum of 24 business hours, after which you can collect your withdrawal at a local Moneygram location.

It’s been increasingly hard to find US poker sites that process cashouts fast. Some sites claim to deliver checks in a couple of weeks but take months (even half a year in the case of relatively popular Lock Poker). Bovada is the biggest US poker site but incredibly also has the fastest withdrawal processing times.

Throughout Bodog’s 15+ years in the online gambling business, no payout issue or dispute has been left unresolved. The only two Bovada payout issues that I recall were in 2008 and 2011 when checks took a long time to process (longer than usual, that is – they still delivered checks faster than most gambling sites do normally). But those were small issues and it’s remarkable how well they’ve done for such a long time.

2008 Payout Delays

Bodog’s payouts were delayed in 2008 and for a good reason: Maryland DOJ and IRS seized $25 million of Bodog’s money as the dollars were sitting on their payment processor’s account. An undercover agent registered an account at Bodog and made two cashouts during the year of 2007, which helped the IRS to seize the money. (Citypaper published a great article on the subject called The Ghost Hand.)

2011 Payout Delays

We have no real information on what caused Bovada payouts to be delayed in 2011. They claimed to be in the process of changing payment processors in order to deliver checks faster in future which then slowed down current check processing. I don’t know if this was the real reason but they surely figured out how to deliver checks fast afterwards.

Bonus Offers & Promotions

• You’ll qualify for the Bovada bonus automatically by signing-up at Bovada without using a Bovada bonus code.
• Bovada’s bonus offer is decent for beginners. You get 60 days to clear the bonus (after you’ve made your first deposit), you can clear the bonus at any stakes you want and the terms are straightforward.
• Bovada caters to recreational players which forces Bovada to make welcome bonuses simple and relatively easy to clear.

First Deposit Bonus

Big poker bonuses are useless unless they can be reasonably cleared. Some bonuses are impossible to clear for beginners; for example, they might take ridiculous amounts of playing to clear in relatively little time or they can only be cleared above micro stakes.

Fortunately, the poker bonus offer is good for beginners. You get 60 days to clear the bonus (after you’ve made your first deposit), you can clear the bonus at any stakes you want and the terms are straightforward. They cater to recreational players which forces them to make their welcome bonuses simple and relatively easy to clear.

How Do I Clear the Bonus?
You clear the poker bonus by reaching new bonus levels; you reach new bonus levels by earning poker points; you earn poker points by generating rake for Bovada.

The more bonus you earn, the easier it gets to clear additional bonus. For example, level three is $100 for 750 poker points while level five is $150 for 1,500 poker points. (Going from level four to level five was 25% easier than going from level one to level two, for instance.)

Here are the charts:

Bovada Poker rake (per pot) to poker points.
Rake generated	Points earned
$1.00 – $3.00	1.00
$0.50 – $0.99	0.50
$0.25 – $0.49	0.25
$0.05 – $0.24	0.10
$0.01 – $0.04	0.05
$1 in tournament fees	3.00

 

 

“Poker points earned” translated to “bonus released”.
Points earned	Bonus released
50	$10
250	$40
750	$100
1500	$150
3000	$300
5000	$400

 

 

Will Additional Deposits Qualify for the Bonus?
Only the money deposited on the same calendar day as your first deposit will qualify for the Bovada Poker deposit bonus. If you deposit $100 next Tuesday and later on that Tuesday deposit another $100, you’ll be eligible for $200 in bonuses.

Should you deposit the additional $100 on Wednesday, however, you’ve already missed the boat and won’t qualify for the bonus.

Do I Need a Bovada Bonus Code?
There is no Bovada bonus code at the moment; you can qualify for the bonus simply by signing-up at their website.

Reload Bonuses
They award reload bonuses only to certain players – whether these players are selected randomly or have to meet certain criteria is unknown. There are no poker reload bonuses available for everyone.

Other Poker Bonuses
In addition to the poker deposit bonus, Bovada players are eligible for a Bad Beat Bonus(win 100 x the big blind, up to $1,000) and a Royal Flush Bonus (win 50 x the big blind, up to $200).

Other Bonuses

You get a 100% welcome bonus (up to $3,000) for your first Bovada Casino deposit and a 50% free bet bonus up to $250 for their sportsbook. How long does it take to clear the bonuses?

Their casino bonus requires you to wager the deposit and bonus amount 25 times over until you can cashout. For a $100 deposit, therefore, you need to wager 25 times $200 (includes both deposit and bonus amounts), or $5000.

Their sportsbook bonus can be cleared by wagering 3 times the deposit plus the bonus amount. For the full bonus, you have to bet $500 and you’ll get $250 in bonus money, which means that in total you need to wager 3 times $750 (or $2250) to clear the full bonus.

You have 60 days to clear the bonus offers.