​Last month, Bovada announced that it was reopening its poker room. Now that it’s here, it will be interesting to see what effect it has on the US online poker market.
 
Bovada initially closed its poker room after selling its poker software to IgnitionPoker just over a year ago. It seemed at the time that Ignition was just a rebranding of Bovada Poker. The sudden return of Bovada Poker last month, however, has left many people confused about the distinction between Bovada and Ignition. To clear this up, @BovadaPoker tweeted on August 23 that Ignition and Bovada, despite sharing the same software and both using the Pai Wang Luo Poker Network, the two companies are “separate entities”.

Since the events of Black Friday shook up the poker world, players have been searching for different ways to play online poker. There have been numerous, but faltering attempts at trying to re-think the current model, but most have fizzled out just as quickly as they were created. The auction style poker room that let you bid on cash prizes is just one creative, yet poor attempt that comes to mind..

Bitcoins on the other hand has been one of the more interesting and successful concepts not only in poker, but the world in general. This fairly new currency was once thought of as a fad, but more recently has emerged as a viable option for poker players all over the world.

Bitcoin is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing payments forms for a series of online poker rooms. Bitcoin works by essentially being its own electronic currency without the need to include a bank to issue funds into your poker account. There are a number of wallets which you simply buy Bitcoins from before then transferring these coins into your poker client.

What’s been interesting to see is that a lot of the poker rooms (such as BetCoin and Nitrogen Sports Poker) offering this Bitcoin service do so solely through the electronic currency with very few actually offering ‘real money’ money as well. This has its advantages and disadvantages, but the main positive that comes out of all this is a way for US based players to legally, essentially play poker for real money.