Jajajeet Chiba: Bovada = Stupada

I have been trying….oh have I been trying….to make some sense of the new Bodog.com rebranding to Bovada.lv.  I even resorted to some heavy hookah smoking last evening to no avail. 

What’s in a name?

Mine, Jagajeet Chiba, means “One Who Has Conquered the Earth”.  Betcha didn’t know that.

My wife, Sadhvi, her name means “Chaste, Virtuous, Honest and Noble to Her Husband”.

Bovada?

I think there might have been a female sacred cow living up the street from me back in my native India with that name.

Last night, while trying to count sheep, all I could see were images of little bovine heading to that mystical land called Bovada.lv.  Instead of milk, gold flowed from their teats.

Bovada is anything but sacred though even if some of the cows Bodog founder Calvin Ayre has slept with claimed to be “religious”.   Yes I've seen a few of those mooooochers!

At first, I thought there was some significant meaning in the name that might appeal to the senses, in this case hunger.  “Vada” is a fritter product, a deep fried fatty food that clogs your arteries worse than cigarettes, though they do only have 60 calaries.

So, basically, when you get hungry, you think “Bovada Poker” I guess.  What an amazing concept:  Name a poker site after a delicious food product. 

If only the folks at Cake Poker would have thought of that one. 

God I never thought the day would come when the name 2BetDSI.com Poker would arouse me.   But, alas, that day has finally come. 

Today, I am learning, “Bovada” could be a play on the words “Bodog” and “Nevada”.

The problem here is that whoever came up with this stupada name failed to realize that Nevada is one of the most loneliest, barest, No Man’s land in the entire United States.  There is a reason why Las Vegas is practically in California. 

BoVegas would be sexy and might conjure up images of winning, riches, and – dare I say it – sin, something I don’t personally indulge in.

BoVada, I think of desert, and I don’t mean dessert like Cake.  I’m talking hundreds and hundreds of miles of desert that make up the state of Nevada.  It also gets really hot there, like 140 degrees in the summer.  Las Vegas just technically happens to be located there.

Let’s face it, Nevada is no California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey…it’s not even on par with  Kazakhstan.  They should have just named the new site Bozakhstan since the .LV extension originates from nearby Latvia, the country we equate most with gambling.   

I don’t know what’s worse, the name Bovada or the fact that there were people emailing us all day yesterday thinking we were Bovada (don’t ask), calling us “Dummies” and demanding they wanted to withdrawal their money because the new “anonymous” poker software kept crashing or locking them out and they couldn’t figure out how to access their accounts.

Look, I’m sure the kinks in the software will be fixed in short time, but this name. 

Are these executives or marketing clowns ever held accountable any more?

Oh, just got word Bodog Becky (also known affectionately as “Blowdog Becky”) is changing her name to … you guessed it ….. Bovada Rep.  Smart girl!

As ridiculous as this name might be, the folks from Cereus Poker had them beat.  Cereus is a species of gram-positive, facultative anaerobe that causes anthrax.  Bovada just causes heartburn. 

- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com