Bodog branded themselves in 2000, several years before the online gambling boom in the United States and across the world took shape. By 2006, Bodog became a market leader in what was now a multi-billion dollar industry. At the time, Bodog was much more than an online gambling site that offered sports betting, poker and casino gambling. Lead by their playboy, billionaire owner, Bodog invested in a mixed martial arts brand, television productions, and even marketed coffee in the Philippines. Following the passage of the UIGEA in 2006, Calvin Ayre decided to leave the online gambling business (at least publicly) and sold the Bodog.com to the Morris Mohawk Gaming Group. Ayre still owned the Bodog Brand but expressed his desire to move away from iGaming altogether. Bodog has long been in the crosshairs of the United States Justice Department. They seized the Bodog.com domain name in 2007 for patent violations. The domain was returned to the sportsbook after they reached a settlement.
In December 2011, the Bodog and Bovada brands separated, likely in large part the ongoing issues with offering online gambling services to U.S. residents. The Morris Mohawk Gaming Group established Bovada to handle U.S clients while Bodog.eu handled the rest of the world. Although the Bodog.com name was no longer active or being used by any of the Bodog Brands or the Morris Mohawk Gaming Group, the US Immigrations and Customers Enforcement Agency seized the domain in February 2012 after indicting Bodog. The move is still a head-scratcher to this day. The government’s crackdown on online gambling operators was well known, but the domain hadn’t been used for quite some time leading up to the seizure.
Bodog Poker Bonus
The poker bonus at Bodog is a 100% up to $1,000 match, which will be applied automatically on your first deposit without the need for a Bodog Poker bonus code though you may have to select the deal from a drop-down menu when making your initial deposit in order for it to be applied to your account. Unfortunately, the Bodog poker bonus is not active on Bodog India. Only Latin American and Canadian customers have access to the Bodog welcome bonus at this time. The amount of bonus you earn is tied to the amount of Reward Points you accumulate during the 30 days after you first fund your account. Every time you collect another 150 points (Canadians) or 15 points (Latin Americans), you’ll obtain a $5 bonus payment, which will be applied to your balance as real money.
The rate of point accrual is different at Bodog.eu (CAN) and Bodog.com (LATAM). Canadians will receive 15 points for every $1 paid in tournament and SNG fees, 15 per dollar contributed in rake in cash games, and 1.5 times the buyin amount of Jackpot Sit & Gos in points. Users in Central and South America instead get 3 points for every $4 paid in tournament and SNG fees, 3 for every $4 contributed in cash game rake, and 3 points for every $16 in Jackpot Sit & Go buyins.
Bodog Poker Bonus Value – Canadians
Tournaments, SNGs, and ring games clear the Bodog.eu poker bonus at the same rate: a rakeback percentage of 50% because you must pay $10 in rake to get back $5 in bonus. In Jackpots, you’ll actually do considerably better, increasing the cashback percentage to an incredible 71%!
Bodog Poker Bonus Value – Latin Americans
The Bodog poker bonus unlocking rates are identical in cash games, sit n’ gos, and MTTs. To collect 15 points and redeem $5 of the bonus, you have to pay $20 in rake and/or fees, for a 25% rakeback percentage. Because of the fact that points are calculated differently in Jackpot Sit & Go, this format boasts a superior rate of return: approximately 89% cashback! Bodog lets players denominate their accounts in currencies other than U.S. dollars. In case you’re using a different currency, the total value of the poker bonus will be capped at a figure corresponding to about $1,000 U.S. dollars, which is 4,000 Brazilian reals, 20,000 Mexican pesos, 40,000 Argentine pesos, 3,000 Peruvian sols, or 7,000 Bolivian bolivianos.
Anonymized Tables
The heart of the recreational player model at Bodog Poker lies in anonymous gameplay. No user is identified by any name other than a randomly generated player number. Not only is it impossible to track your adversaries over long periods of time, but you can’t write saved notes on them either. There are a couple of HUD tracking software programs that work with Bodog, but they only allow you to monitor your opponents over the course of a single table session vastly reducing the utility of these types of tools.
In the two most popular forms of cash game poker, No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha, stakes run from $0.02/$0.05 to $10/$20. There are also LHE tables denominated from $0.05/$0.10 to $30/$60. You can only join a maximum of four ring game tables at a time.
In April 2017, Bodog introduced a Quick Seat feature that makes table selection impossible. The way it works is that players select the game format, table size, and stakes they wish to play, and then the software places them in a seat at an appropriate game. The consequences of this change have been that the most demanded games tend to fill up more rapidly than before, but thinly played variants, like the limit tables, have seen a drop in traffic.
Zone Poker
Zone is Bodog’s take on fast-fold poker, a style first made popular by Full Tilt’s RUSH Poker quite a few years ago. In Zone, nobody has to wait for hands to complete after he or she folds; instead, anyone who mucks a hand is brought right away to a new table to begin another round. The elimination of much of the downtime traditionally inherent in poker leads to a blazing-fast pace and ensures that you’ll see many more hands per hour in Zone than at a standard ring table.
Because there are no static tables in Zone, players instead join pools. You can see how many players are in each pool in the lobby although all population figures of 50 or more are indicated as “50+.” It’s not uncommon, particularly during peak hours, to see multiple blind levels sporting 50+ participants at once. Although the greatest number of players can be found in NLHE Zone, PLO runs too, and there are a couple of PLO/8 stakes supported as well. Player volume in four-card Zone is lighter than in Hold’em.
Sit and Goes
The buyins for SNG poker extend from $1 + $0.05 up through $200 + $14. Regular, turbo, and hyper turbo speeds are present, and table sizes include heads-up, six-max, and nine-player. There are also 27-man multi-table sit-n-goes. The majority of contests are for NLHE, but there are PLO and PLO/8 games listed up to $100 + $9. Bodog offers Double-Ups, which are similar to the Double or Nothings you may encounter at other sites, as well as Triple-Ups, which pay out three buyins apiece to the top third of the participants. Most of the Double-Ups charge half rake compared to similarly priced competitions, but this isn’t the case with Triple-Ups except at the higher buyin levels. Beginner matches have a flatter payout structure than the other games, allowing more people to get paid.
You can’t view sit-n-goes that have already started (except, of course, for the ones that you’re in), nor can you even see them in the lobby. Still, as long as you play for micro and small stakes, you should have no trouble getting the amount of action you crave.
Tournaments
Bodog, in past years, ran frequent guaranteed tournaments that overlaid very often. This foresighted decision worked out well as the room now has enough MTT traffic to almost always cover the sums promised. There’s more than $1.5 million in guarantees up for grabs each week, and the largest of them is the $150 + $12 $150,000 Guaranteed on Sunday afternoons. Throughout the rest of the week, you can buy into events priced from $1 + $0.10 to $300 + $25.
Beyond the regularly scheduled tourneys, Bodog hosts series several times per year. These generally have boosted prize pools and an enhanced roster of events that allows you to play formats that are not commonly spread during the normal course of things. Recurring series at Bodog include the Black Diamond Poker Open and the Golden Spade Poker Open, each of which routinely offer millions of dollars in total prizes to the victors. Whenever these series are about to begin, satellites appear so that cash-strapped individuals can attempt to win their entries for less.
Sports You Can Bet On
In short, Bodog has a wide variety of sports to bet on and certainly the sports that will tailor to recreational bettors. The most popular sports are listed at the top of the sportsbook including:
- Football (NFL, College, CFL)
- Baseball (MLB, College, Japan, Korea)
- Basketball (NBA, college, Euroleague, International, Rest of World)
- Soccer (EPL, Asia, Europe, France, Germany, International, Italy, Spain, North America)
- Tennis (ATP Tour, WTA Tour, Challenger, ITF Men, ITF Women)
- Golf (PGA Tour, European Tour, Champions Tour).
With many of these sports you can bet on futures as well as “specials”, which are simply some one-off bets that come and go whenever a special topic arises in one of these sports. For instance, a special golf bet could be: “Will Tiger Woods win a Major in 2020?” These can be fun ways to get involved in futures betting, but be aware that these specials can open and close in a fairly quick manner.
Other sports that you can bet on at Bodog include MMA/UFC, hockey, Aussie Rules football, badminton, boxing, cricket, cycling, darts, handball, horse racing, motorsports, rugby, snooker, table tennis, volleyball, Olympics, and winter sports.
The last few betting options in the sportsbook that aren’t exactly athletically-inclined are numbers games, entertainment, politics, virtual sports, and eSports. While we have seen even more betting options at other sportsbooks in the industry, mostly in sportsbooks tailored toward European players, this is not something we are ready to hold against Bodog at all as the major sports are there as well as all of the other popular sports that are bet on worldwide.
Bodog Deposits And Withdrawals
Bodog’s cashier doesn’t have a ton of options, but since they mostly cater to Canadians, their options make a bit more sense. Both Skrill and Neteller left the Canadian market, so it wouldn’t make much sense for them to still offer e-wallets. Bodog takes deposits through Bitcoin, debit and credit card, and e-checks. All methods are free to deposit. Credit or debit cards may charge players a fee for international transactions, but that’s the card company and not a surcharge by Bodog.
Currently, their only withdrawal options are Bitcoin and check. Both are free of charge to players. Bitcoin withdrawals are processed in about 48 hours. This is slower than some sites, specifically those that are Bitcoin-only betting sites, but still decent for a site that deals in both fiat-currency and crypto-currency. Bodog is a new adapter as well, so it’s likely their speeds improve with time.
Checks have consistently been processed within two weeks at Bodog. Occasionally, their speeds are under a week and sometimes just a few days. As far as operating in gray markets, Bodog and Bovada have been one of the fastest and most consistent sites for over a decade.
Mobile App
This is another area where Bodog have done their homework. Mobile betting is easy to use and fast. It’s based on touch screen technology so there is no lengthy scrolling and delays. The mobile site is accessible on android smart phones, iphones, ipads and most tablets. The full range of bets and promotions found on the main site are available on mobile betting. Betting in play is also available.
Jackpot Sit & Go
The latest expansion to the Bodog poker palette, Jackpot Sit & Go, went live at the end of October 2017. These three-handed hyper turbo games use a random number to determine the prize pool. The valid multipliers are: 2x, 5x, 15x, 120x, 240x, 1,200x.
The higher multipliers are rarer than the cheaper ones; the 2x option is chosen close to 75% of the time. At the top three multiplier levels, all players win with a prize distribution of 80/10/10, but the rest of the Jackpot Sit & Gos are winner-takes-all. It’s possible to play up to four Jackpots at the same time. The buyins offered are $2, $7, $20, $60.
