Introducing Online Gambling Site Bovada
Please Note: There are BOVADA Payout concerns at the moment. It is not a code-red type threat but please be sure to click that link and read prior to depositing with BOVADA.
Bovada.lv Review
Bovada.lv is a recreational gambling site that offers players from the United States sports betting, casino and online poker from a single website. Their origins date back to 2007, when Bodog.com founder Calvin Ayre divided his gambling empire into portions and sold the North American operation. It was a company registered in the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory of Quebec called Morris Mohawk Gaming Group (MMGG) that purchased the United States portion. This company kept the Bodog name until December 14, 2011 when they changed it Bovoda; they now operate at www.bovada.lv.
Bovada is NOT for Everyone
Let me start this bovada.lv review off in a brutally honest way and say – Bovada is not ideal for all players. This is a company that spends big money on advertising, marketing and branding. Although they have a relatively clean track record, consider Bovada the online gambling equivalent of McDonalds (minus the dollar menu). American sports bettors wager here for the name recognition, convenient deposit methods, and great software. Their actual betting odds are nothing special at all.
In fact, the company utilizes a tactic illegal in the United States called “dual-pricing”. Depending how they have you profiled, you’ll get different set of odds logged into their website than you’ll see when logged out. This is more or less like standing in line at McDonalds, everyone else buys a burger for $4.00 and when it’s your turn you’re told the price is $4.50.
Of course, with the way betting odds work dual pricing can sometimes be a good thing. Bovada is a recreational gambling site so they often shade the lines in such a way that the odds are worse for popular teams. So, for example if the Patriots should be -6.5 -110, here you might find them -7.0 -110. In this case, betting the Patriots’ opponent at +7.0 is probably a great bet. If you’re purely a recreational bettor you’ll be best off wagering with www.5dimes.com. However unless you understand the importance of reduced juice you may find 5Dimes dull by comparison, but here every successful bet pays much higher and the value you end up with is far better than bonuses. If you prefer the flash, bonuses, excitement – an online a betting website similar to Bovada that offers betting, casino and poker from the same website is www.bookmaker.eu. They also have much higher betting limits, better bonuses, no dual pricing and an impressive history you can read about in our bookmaker.eu review. Understand: using 5Dimes, Bookmaker and Bovada together gives you a near perfect hat trick of online betting outs; it might be wise to just use all three.
What I like About Bovada
Although I very much dislike their anonymous poker tables and dual betting prices, there is a plethora of things I very much like about Bovada. Here are few of my favorite intricacies:
- Best Teaser Odds – Here you’ll find 3-team 6-point teasers at +180, 3-team 10-point teasers at -110, and 4-team 13-point teasers at -120. Bovada teaser odds are highly completive as is, but are even better because they don’t shade against basic strategy favorites and even shade in such a way basic strategy underdogs are more profitable. Their odds makers (or more correctly: their guys who copy odds from competitors) LOVE the point spread 3, so when other sites are offering +1.5 -110, Bovada might be offering +3 -140. Because teasers use fixed payouts: the -110 and -140 makes no difference. Here when using 6-point teasers you’ll often get an extra 0.5 to 1.5 points better than you get at the competition.
- Underdogs – Even with the dual pricing model, there is still plenty of value to be found on underdogs. There are times where Pinnacle Sports might have an NFL underdog +6.5 -109 and Bovada has them +7 -110 for one group of clients, and +7 -115 for those on the wrong side of their dual pricing model. Obviously the +7 -110 is a GREAT bet, but +7 -115 is still great as well because here a push on 7 is worth FAR MORE than 6 cents. So despite Bovada gouging odds for some, you can still find solid value here.
- Propositions – Bovada does not offer propositions on every NFL game, the same as say Intertops does, but for the games they do offer props on – plenty of value can be found. I can recall various sack props bets where everyone else was offering over/under 3.5 and Bodog had the line at 4. Or a Mathew Stafford passing yards prop where most sites had the over/under at 307.5 to 312.5 and Bodog had 296.5, as did Ladbrokes. Overall smart prop bettors can find plenty of value at bovoda.lv.
- Bonuses – New players are welcomed with up to a $100 free play. The exact amount is 20% the size of your initial deposit. Although Bovoda does not market reload bonuses, they do send plenty of promotion offers to loyal clients via email. This is for sure a website you want to click “yes” to the question about receiving promotional offers via email; opting out would be a costly mistake.
There are many other features recreational bettors may enjoy. For example: live betting is offered on most nationally televised games and here you can bet not only on point spreads and totals throughout the match, but you can also bet on the results of each drive, series, snap, pitch or at bat. They also have an impressive mobile betting site that works on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Nokia phones. As far as these added features go, Bovada is about on par with industry leader www.bookmaker.eu.
Bovada.lv Review Concluded
In conclusion: while there are areas Bovada falls short in value, there is still plenty to like. All punters have different tastes so some recreational bettors might love www.bovoda.lv while savvy bettors might enjoy using them as a secondary out. To conclude this 100% honest bovada.lv review, let me state for the most part Bovada is reputable and is probably worth giving them a try. At the very least you can take advantage of their 20% initial deposit match bonus which is given as a free play.
