Bodog Poker Site Review
Bodog offers an impressive software and user-friendly site layout. The lobby and poker room feature a simple yet fast platform with many custom features. The lobby contains easily viewed statistics (such as average pot size) and active tables that allow fast and convenient game selection. Game movement in the poker room is quick and easy with customized graphics such as nicely sized and positioned cards, a number of felt-colored portions, brightness controls, and a moving table with a soft spotlight that highlights the acting player. Chip stacks and bet amounts are clearly marked and a dashboard style layout shows each player’s controls for each hand. This area offers three simultaneous games and has several mini-views, allowing one game viewable in full screen and the others in mini view. Players can see their statistics while playing at each table, along with other features such as hand history, note taking, find a friend, and preferred seating. Overall, the software quality is very good. Bodog Poker’s highly rated game variety offers Texas Holdem (No Limit, Limit), Omaha (Hi, Lo) , 7 Stud Poker Lots of Tournaments, 5 Card Draw, Stud and Stud Hi Lo. Most of the action is in Holdem and Omaha with stakes ranging from $0.05/$0.10 to $25/$50. The number of online players can range from several hundred early in the day and even into the thousands later on The activity can be as many as 5,000 to 10,000 (or even more) people on at a time. The games are full of action through most money levels. Bodog Poker offers many types of tournaments, such as the popular Sunday $100,000 guaranteed event. The prize pool is guaranteed at this level by Bodog even if the value of all buy-ins is lower. This tournament is also a qualifier for a seat at the World Series of Poker, or any other major tournament around the world through the Players Choice promotion. Most of the tournaments allow qualifiers to start at $1 so everyone has a chance at a major seat. Also available is the leader board challenge. It gives one player per week a chance to go up against a Poker pro. It guarantees a prize pool of $1,000. If the pro wins however, the poker room rolls the prize over into the next week. The poker room has even reportedly awarded more than $4,000,000 in cash prizes per month, just through tournaments alone. Bodog is very creative with its bonus offerings. The current signup bonus is an instant 10% upfront cash bonus on the initial deposit. Over the first 30 days, Bodog gives an additional $1 for every $10 won up to a 100% match of the first deposit (the maximum is $500 US or currency equivalent). Other offers include: • a 20% refer a friend bonus • a 100% reload bonus • a bad beat bonus • a royal flush bonus • a double point’s bonus.
The majority of transactions run quite smoothly and problems are dealt with quickly by appropriate personnel. The site offers support 24 hours per day, all week, through e-mail, online chat, and by no-charge phone. Assistance for any reason is easily accessed. The site is really impressive in the way that it welcomes new players. As a beginner-friendly site, Bodog Poker also has tournaments for novices, enabling them to ease into tournament play. Beyond the starting bonus, it offers newcomers free poker games just as a learning process or for entertainment. The whole plan for beginners involves earning their way up to higher limits in a way similar to the real money games. Later, beginner real money tournaments operate as a way to gradually move up and play for greater amounts. The beginner advantage is that chances of finishing in the money are about two or more times greater than the regular tournaments. In some tournaments, about half the players leave “in the money.” Also, the tournament buy-in fee for starters is around $2 and increases to about $17. The site's management obviously believes in catering very well to helping players improve their skills. This beginner structure serves as a well-planned "Poker School." The "Gentleman's Guide" for example, includes separate educational sections teaching how to select the right game, understand how position is important, how to make decisions in playing a hand, how to use strategy in a game, and the all-important skills of reading opponents and the “art” of bluffing. A quick glance at the Bodog Poker site will impress even the most inexperienced and indifferent individual. User-friendly, simple, and attractive site features encourage further interest, exploration, and use. The people at Bodog have found the key ingredient enabling their site to become one of the hottest and rapidly growing rooms today.
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