It took long enough, but Bovada Poker finally joined the year 2017 and launched its own version of the Lottery Sit & Go called Jackpot Sit & Go. Actually, I shouldn’t be harsh in such a sarcastic tone, as Bovada only recently brought its online poker room back to life after selling it to Ignition Casino, so I suppose this was really pretty quick work on Bovada’s part.
The Jackpot Sit & Go doesn’t really vary much any other poker offering of its type. It is three-handed, blinds go up quickly, stacks are short, and the winner takes the entire prize pool except in instances where that prize pool is excessively large. And, as usual, the prize pool is determined by a random spin before the game starts, calculated as a multiple of the buy-in.
The table of possible prize pool multiples and their buy-ins:
2x – 74,995 in 100,000
5x – 24,887 in 100,000
15x – 105 in 100,000
120x – 9 in 100,000
240x – 3 in 100,000
1,200x – 1 in 100,000
So, most of the time – virtually all the time, really, the prize for a Jackpot Sit & Go on Bovada is going to be either twice or five times the buy-in. With the rest of the prize possibilities amounting to just 118 chances in 100,000, there really is not much point to even hoping for any of them, even the 15x prize multiplier.
The natural comparison for Bovada’s Jackpot Sit & Go will be to PokerStars’ Spin & Go. They really are quite similar, with the prizes being the main difference. PokerStars has eight prize multiplier tiers for their Spin & Go’s, while Bovada has just six for Jackpot. The primary variation is that PokerStars’ extra tiers come in the middle, with 6x, 10x, and 25x instead of Bovada’s 15x.
PokerStars also varies its prize multiplier probabilities based on the Spin & Go buy-in, whereas Bovada uses just one probability table for all of its Jackpot Sit & Go’s.
Speaking of buy-ins, Bovada Jackpot Sit & Go’s $2, $7, $15, and $30. PokerStars, again with the comparison, has more on the micro-stakes end and more on the high stakes end. But that makes sense, since Pokerstars is the largest online poker room in the world and naturally will have the players that can fill games at a wide range of stakes.
But at every poker room, most players sit at the lower stakes, and Bovada’s rake is better than PokerStars’ at the small stakes end of the spectrum. The rake at Bovada Jackpot Sit & Go’s is 7 percent all the way around, whereas it starts at 8 percent on PokerStars at the lowest three buy-in tiers and decreases from there.
On a final note, as frankly, this comparison of Bovada’s and PokerStars’ Lottery Sit & Go offerings is getting a bit tiresome, Bovada is not awarding loyalty points for Jackpot games, although that is qualified with a “for the moment” clause. So, I guess we should expect to get those points sometime in the future.