Bovada Poker review (2026): games, rake and the $500 bonus

ByCrown Wagers Editorial Team Updated Reviews

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Bovada Poker is a decent pick for casual Hold’em and Omaha players in the states it serves. Its tables are anonymous, so regulars can’t track you with HUD software, and it shares its player pool with Ignition. The downside is the offshore setup: no US state regulates it, and it’s closed to 19 states and Washington, DC, including all six states with licensed online poker sites.

This page covers the poker room. For the sportsbook, fees and payout times, see our Bovada review.

Who you play against

Bovada’s poker room is on the PaiWangLuo network, which it joined in 2017, and Bovada says US players get the network’s entire player pool. Poker.org reported in January 2026 that Bovada and Ignition share their player pools, so the person across the table may have signed up at either one.

The tables are anonymous. You play without a username, so other players can’t follow you between games or build up stats on you with tracking software and heads-up displays (HUDs). You can download your own hand histories 24 hours after a session ends.

The shared pool got some bad press in January 2026, when a video posted on X showed rooms of computers running poker tables with nobody at them. The poster called it a bot farm on Ignition and Bovada. Ignition said the footage was from 2022 (the poster said 2024) and that the accounts in it, along with related accounts found in a review, had already been closed.

How busy the tables are

Bovada doesn’t publish player numbers. Ignition calls itself the largest US network by traffic but doesn’t give figures either, so any player count you see for this network is an outside estimate. Bovada’s tournament guarantees, below, are the nearest thing to a size figure it gives.

Games and formats

Bovada lists just three games: Texas Hold’em, Omaha and Omaha Hi-Lo, each in no-limit, pot-limit and fixed-limit.

Cash games and Zone Poker

On a computer you can play up to four regular cash tables at once. Zone Poker is the fast-fold version: when you fold, you’re moved straight to a new table with new players and new cards. You get 15 seconds to act, half the usual time, and Bovada says you’ll play two to three times as many hands an hour. You can run two Zone tables at once.

Jackpot Sit & Go

These are three-player Hold’em sit & gos. Everyone starts with 300 chips and the blinds go up every three minutes. Once all three players register, a reel spins to set the prize as a multiple of the buy-in. Bovada publishes prize tables for buy-ins from $0.50 to $100.

In roughly three games out of four, the prize is 2x the buy-in and only the winner gets paid. The multipliers that also pay second and third place come up in fewer than 1 game in 1,000. At the $100 level the top one is 2,500x, a $250,000 prize pool, which Bovada’s table lists at twice per million games. That’s higher than the “up to 1000X” on Bovada’s main poker page.

Bovada doesn’t list a fee for these, but averaged over its own prize tables, prizes add up to about 93% of what players pay in at every buy-in level, leaving about 7% for the house.

Tournaments

Bovada says it guarantees $2 million in tournament prizes every week. The biggest regular event is the $200K Guaranteed on Sundays, and there’s a $100,000 guaranteed as well. Buy-ins run from micro stakes (up to $5) to high rollers ($75 and up), satellites start at $1, and there are turbo, hyper-turbo and knockout formats, Mystery Knockouts included. Sit & gos range from heads-up to 180 players.

Bovada’s tournament page names two yearly series. The 2026 Black Diamond Poker Open ran from February 20 to March 25, and the 2025 Golden Spade Poker Open ran from October 23 to November 26 with 150 events and more than $6 million guaranteed, according to Ignition’s pages for the two series. Ignition hadn’t posted 2026 Golden Spade dates by late September.

Rake

Bovada’s rake page takes 1 cent for every 20 cents in the pot, which is 5%, up to a cap that depends on the stakes and the number of players. The highest cap is $4. The page only covers cash games and doesn’t list tournament fees.

PlayersStakes up to $0.10/$0.25Above $0.10/$0.25, up to $10/$20
2$0.50$1.00
3$1.00$2.00
4$1.00$3.00
5$2.00$3.00
6$2.00$4.00
Maximum rake per pot in no-limit and pot-limit cash games, from Bovada’s rake page, September 2026. Heads-up tables are capped at $1 at every stake, and fixed-limit caps run from 10 cents to $3.

Take a six-player no-limit game at $0.25/$0.50. A $30 pot pays $1.50 in rake. A $100 pot would pay $5 at 5%, but the six-player cap at those stakes is $4, so you pay $4. With only two players, the same $100 pot would pay $1.

Software and playing on your phone

On a computer you use Bovada’s download client, which runs on Windows 10 or later and macOS 10.15 or later. There’s no phone app. Bovada’s help center suggests adding a shortcut to your home screen instead, and mobile poker runs in the browser on iPhone and Android.

Bovada says mobile has every cash game and tournament, Zone Poker and Jackpot Sit & Gos included, and you can deposit and cash out from your phone. The difference is multi-tabling: up to four tables at once on a phone or tablet, cash or tournament, against up to 15 tournament tables on a computer.

The poker welcome bonus

New players get a 100% match on their first deposit, up to $500, with the code BPWB500. Bovada pays it out in $5 pieces, one for every 150 Rewards Points you earn playing poker in the 30 days after that deposit. Released money has no rollover and goes straight to your withdrawable balance.

Points are added when you leave a cash table or finish a tournament. Bovada’s Rewards table gives cash games and tournaments 15 points per $1 and Jackpot Sit & Gos 1.5, but it doesn’t say whether “per $1” means per dollar of rake and fees or per dollar you bet. The full $500 takes 15,000 points. If the points are per dollar of rake, each $5 takes $10 in rake, and the whole bonus takes $1,000 in rake within the 30 days.

Your poker play also won’t count toward the rollover of any other bonus that’s active on your account. The sports and casino codes are on our Bovada bonus codes page.

Check the current BPWB500 terms on Bovada’s poker bonus page before you deposit.

See Bovada’s poker bonus

Affiliate link. 18+ (or older where your state requires). Not available in 19 states and Washington, DC.

Deposits, withdrawals and who can play

Poker runs off your regular Bovada account and cashier. Crypto deposits carry no Bovada fee, while card deposits after your first cost 15.9% or more. Our guides to depositing on Bovada and how long withdrawals take have the details.

Bovada is an offshore site with no US state license, and it doesn’t accept players living in 19 states and Washington, DC. Its poker page still names only Delaware, Maryland, Nevada and New Jersey, which is out of date. The help center’s list covers the whole site, poker included, and our page on where Bovada is available has it. Bovada’s terms treat using a VPN to get around the block as fraud, which can cost you your account and your balance.

Six states have licensed online poker sites running: Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Michigan and West Virginia. Bovada blocks all six. It also blocks Connecticut and Rhode Island, which have legalized online poker but had no sites running as of mid-2026. In those six states, licensed sites answer to a state regulator if something goes wrong. This isn’t legal advice.

Only bet what you’ve set aside to lose. If gambling has stopped being fun, call or text 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738) for free, confidential help, 24/7, or chat online with the National Problem Gambling Helpline.

Sources

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