For more information, read this comprehensive Bovada Poker Review from gpsts.org. Ignition Poker is a skin of Bovada Poker sharing the same player pool But you can sign up to Ignition Poker and receive their welcome bonus. While writing this Bovada review, we noticed that you can play over 220 video slots, and the library is constantly updated. You’ll find everything from classic slots to modern, 3D video slots with lots of bonus features. Most of the Bovada slots are powered by Rival and RTG. You’ll also find some Bodog Network games.

• Bovada Vs Ignition Poker
• Bovada Poker Hud

After a roughly one-year hiatus, unregulated online poker room Bovada has returned to once again cater to U.S. players in unregulated markets.

Bovada Vs Ignition Poker

The company announced the return in a late August email to customers, as well as a posting on their website.

Prior to September 2016, Bovada operated as one of the most popular online poker rooms in the world, reaching as high as No. 3 according to traffic trackers at PokerScout. However, at that point, the company announced a transition, ostensibly selling its poker offering to Ignition Casino and closing its doors on Sept. 30.

Once licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission but operating in blatant disregard for U.S. law, Bovada now lists no regulating gaming commission on its website.

The poker offering at Ignition turned out to be a clone of the Bovada client, which led many to believe that the room was still under the same ownership but with the proverbial banners simply replaced.

Now, the Bovada brand is back, while the Ignition skin carries on as well. All are part of the PaiWangLuo Poker Network, which acquired the Bodog Poker Network and all of its skins, including the aforementioned Ignition, in early 2017.

Bovada Exits Five States

Bovada, which operated in violation of U.S. law after the 2011 exits of major online poker operators, aims to poach customers who reside in unregulated U.S. markets and therefore don't have access to regulated online poker. On Wednesday, the company sent an email to customers in the three states that offer regulated online poker in the U.S. (Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware), plus Maryland and New York, saying that it will no longer offer poker services in those states. Player accounts in those five states will be closed by Oct. 2, 2017.

Bovada Poker Hud

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  Online PokerBodog PokerPoker and the Law

I’ll admit, I was a bit worried about what I was going to write about this week.
As a blog that has transitioned in an out of being a place where I tell stories about interesting people I meet at the poker table, it’s such a dry spell when I don’t have anyone to meet. Granted, that’s what everyone’s going through right now, but I did have a slight moment of panic when I thought that poker rooms might be closed long enough that I’d have to get a real job once this is all over just to rebuild the bankroll.
It’s been rough for everyone all around these past few weeks with the mass quarantine we have going on, but I’ve used this time to really dive into some of my finer passions: cooking and, of course, poker.
A few days ago, I deposited the limited amount of bitcoin I have onto Ignition Casino. The only reason I have any BTC is because ages ago, when Bovada said they were closing up shop and selling to Ignition, I had to withdraw all of my funds, and bank withdrawals were taking way too long. I set up a wallet, and the funds were transferred shortly thereafter. I was astounded at how simple it was. Since then, I’ve done most of my online play on Global Poker, but a friend recommended Ignition a few days ago; he said the action was great, and the compatibility with PokerTracker 4 was a huge bonus. In the past few days, I’ve put in more hours on Ignition than I had on Global in the previous week because my playing experience has been that much more enjoyable, so I thought I’d do an honest review of the two sites, both of which have their merits.
For the record, I’m only going to be reviewing my experience with the cash games I’ve played so far. On Global, I’ve played anything from 50NL to 500NL. On Ignition, I have only played 25NL. Sample for Global is around 20-25 hours of play, and sample for Ignition is a measly 1,000 hands over 3-4 sessions.

ACTION/SITE TRAFFIC
Global Poker: For global, the site traffic for cash games seems to peak around 8PM-12PM EST. It kind of sucks because I’d rather play earlier, but such is life. In general, I’ve noticed that the full ring games have more fishy players than the 6-max games, and at 50NL-100NL, there are usually 7+ tables running in the mid-to-late evening on the East coast. As for the quality of the player pool, sure, there are some regs, but even when I played 500NL on a Tuesday afternoon, there were some whales in the game. Reg-to-fish ratio at full-ring is usually 7-2 or so, but there aren’t that many players just absolutely punting it off. Nearly every table I’ve played has at least a few fish, and usually if there are no more fish at the table, the game breaks immediately. Funny how similar it is to live. Players have real screen names, so table selecting, and bum hunting exist, but as far as I know, you can’t change seats once you’re at a table. Another thing about Global is on some of the tables, players actually chat with each other – and not just to talk shit about hands. In a 200NL session I played the other day, the players were openly chatting about the quarantine and the insanity at the grocery stores, the loss of sports and the insane NFL offseason we’ve been having, what kind of whiskey two players enjoyed drinking while they played, and other random stuff. It was the closest thing I’ve ever felt to live poker in an online game.
tl;dr: Play in the mid/late evening if you’re EST. Games are fairly soft.
Rating: 7/10

Ignition: Because of the anonymous player IDs and the inability to table select, I don’t actually know how many tables of 25NL Ignition has running at any given time, but they do have a 4-table max on their site, and I’ve always been able to run 4 tables of full ring. It’s never been a struggle to find a game. To get seated, you choose a game/stake, table type (HU, 6-max, full ring), and your buy-in, and then the game auto-seats you. This prevents bum-hunting and seat sniping, a move I thoroughly approve of. Nearly all of the tables I played had at least two fish in the game, and games that didn’t usually broke quickly. The regs, for what it’s worth, aren’t great, but the reg-to-fish ratio is usually 7-2 or 6-3, sometimes with even more fish. Remember, however, that these tables are lower stakes that Global. This might be my small sample, but I’ve played at two or three tables where one player was punting it away (ex: I open UTG with AK, BB 3-bets me, I flat, and he goes bet/bet/shove on a K-high board with pocket 99).
tl;dr: Great traffic and soft games.
Rating: 8/10

SOFTWARE
Global Poker: One massive upside about Global is that their software is browser-based. It makes it really easy to play anywhere you go because you can use any device imaginable. Visiting family for the weekend and you didn’t feel like bringing your laptop? You can borrow one of theirs and still play. Mobile play is also easy, and multitabling on mobile isn’t bad either. That said, they just rolled out a new UI, and I’m not a huge fan of it. The buttons are smaller, and the text is a bit smaller too, so when I’m quickly scanning a table to see the size of the pot, it isn’t always the first thing I notice. Multitabling on PC is a bit frustrating for Global; I typically open the tables I want to play, lay them on top of each other, make sure they are all about the same size, and then move them to each corner of my screen. They overlap some, but it’s not a huge deal. It’s just the process of doing this that’s annoying. Ignition has one button to auto-tile all of your windows. However, on Global, there’s no max number of tables you can play at once. You can auto-top up when your stack falls below 95 BB.
tl;dr: Software/UI is not great, but you can play as many tables as you want.
Rating: 4/10

Ignition: Holy shit am I a sucker for a clean UI and nice software. Ignition’s software honestly reminds me of Stars, but maybe I’m just being nostalgic. One-click auto-tile or auto-cascade is REALLY nice. The software is downloadable, meaning you can’t play it on Chromebooks, but they have a mobile app. But I really can’t stress enough how much I simply enjoy playing on Ignition over Global because of how easy the software is to work with. When one table gets bad and I want to open another, I can just auto-tile and the tables will rearrange themselves accordingly. On Global, I have to drag the table out, resize it, etc. while I’m in the middle of other hands. That said, one of my friends said he was playing a few tournaments on Ignition the other day and the site crashed. He ended up getting his buy-ins back, but it’s still a frustrating problem to deal with. Last night, I was 4-tabling (oh yeah, that’s another drawback – max 4 tables), and I got to facing a large hero call when I rivered top set QQ on 9768Q. I decided a fold was best, so I clicked fold, but then I disconnected, even though my other three tables were playing normally. I ended up timing out and the hand auto-folded, but it would have been infuriating if I decided to call. To put salt in the wound, I was reconnected a minute later where I discovered that my disconnect caused me to auto-fold AA the next hand. Sheesh. Could have been my internet connection, but my desktop is hard-wired into my modem, and again, my other three tables were fine. Notably missing is an auto-top up feature.
tl;dr: Sexy UI. Connection/crashing issues are a concern. Max 4 tables at a time. No auto-top up.
Rating: 7/10

DEPOSIT/WITHDRAWAL/BONUSES
Global Poker: When you make a deposit on Global, what you’re actually doing is paying real USD for their “Gold Coins” which is play money. As a “bonus” for those Gold Coins, you receive an amount of “Sweeps Coins” equivalent to the amount you spent in USD with a bonus of 4-5%. So if you were to buy $500 USD worth of Gold Coins, you would receive 520 Sweeps Coins, which have a 1:1 value in USD. Once purchasing Sweeps Coins, you can play immediately. Occasionally, Global will also do Facebook and Twitter polls, and answers will enter you in a drawing for Sweeps Coins (usually $5-$10 or a tournament ticket). There is no rakeback. Withdrawals require an ID and proof of address; once these are confirmed, withdrawals can be executed directly to your bank in a few days. After the initial verification, the process is quite simple.
tl;dr: Instant deposits. Easy withdrawals once verified. Small, instant bonuses.
Rating: 8/10
Ignition: When you deposit on Ignition, you get a 100%-125% bonus on your initial deposit, with the greater bonus going to those who deposit using BTC. BTC deposits are converted using an exchange rate provided for you that is near equivalent to most of what you see online; I think when I did it, they actually gave me an exchange rate that was higher than CoinBase. To make the deposit, Ignition gives you an address which I copied and pasted to my BTC wallet (I use Ethereum), and after making the transaction, I had to wait about an hour or so for it to go through. To receive your deposit bonus, you have to grind it out, paying rake at the tables to “unlock” your bonus bit-by-bit. You have a full year to do this. For those of you who have bonus whored in the past, it’s pretty much the same as all of the old sites. I haven’t done any withdrawals yet, but I’d imagine that doing a BTC withdrawal is quite simple.
tl;dr: BTC is easy. Not sure about USD. HUGE deposit bonus over the course of a year.
Rating: 9/10

PLAYER TRACKING/HAND HISTORIES/HUD
Global Poker: Hand histories have a unique link that is generated once a hand is over. There is no HUD, and as far as I know, no export to PT4/HEM. When taking notes on players, Global gives you a reasonably sized box for notes and a color system to classify players. I know that lack of PT4/HEM support is massive for keeping the regs away and drawing the whales in, but man, it’s just not as satisfying to play online poker for me when I can’t scroll through my hand histories and look for places to improve my strategy. When I play a session on Global, I have to open a separate note on Evernote. As a hand I want to study is completed, I have to copy the link, swap windows, paste the link into my note, and then write a little description (ex: AJ BTN vs. 88 BB trip on J high board) which is cumbersome to do while multitabling.
tl;dr: No HUDs and no PT4/HEM. Hand histories generated after completion of a hand with unique link.
Rating: 2/10
Ignition: I can’t even begin to tell you how exciting it was for me to finally be able to play on a site where the games are decent and the hand histories are exportable. Being able to quickly tag hands and sort through them after a session is SO RELIEVING. I had gotten so accustomed to the system I created while playing on Global that I forgot about what a bitch it was. PT4 finally has Ignition support for grabbing hand histories, but it still doesn’t have a HUD. Fortunately, Ace Poker Solutions has a work around for some price (I was grandfathered in from when it was $9.99 on Bovada, but it might be $59.99 now) that tricks PT4 into thinking you’re actually playing on iPoker, which allows you to use a HUD on Ignition. It’s fantastic. When I first started playing online poker, I was obviously fixated on it, and with the advent of software and all these other ways you could tinker with your game and strategy, I had such a passion for it. I’ve never felt that playing on Global, but now that I can on Ignition, I’m so excited to study the game again.
tl;dr: PT4 support. Use Ace Poker Solutions for HUD on PT4/HEM.
Rating: 8/10

Clearly, if you’ve been following along, I lean way harder toward Ignition than Global Poker. I will say this, however: I think as I move up in stakes, it’s likely that I’ll find the games on Ignition are tougher than on Global. I can’t imagine that the 500NL on Ignition is as soft as the Global game I played. For now though, the compatibility with PT4 is so important for me because it makes the process of improving as a player so much easier and more enjoyable. I’ll be playing most of my hands on Ignition this week unless Global is running a juicy tournament. I also haven’t played any tournaments on Ignition yet, so I don’t know what the pool is like, but quickly scanning yesterday, I noticed this important tidbit: there were a few tournaments that had MASSIVE (read: biggest I’ve ever seen) overlays. I was astounded. I noticed that a few tournaments were canceled due to lack of runners, but yeah; I think there’s some insane money to be made on Ignition tournaments.
Over the next few weeks, I’m not sure I’ll have as much to write about, but I have considered streaming or doing HH reviews on a YouTube channel. I hope you all stick with me on this blog and what becomes of it through The Plague v2.0, but more importantly, I hope you’re all staying safe and not going batshit crazy. See you in the online streets!