BY TOM SOMACH

One of the biggest online poker rooms on the planet has lost its web address.

Bodog, which for years has had the web address www.bodog.com, recently had to give up the addy after being sued and losing a court case in the U.S. over the ownership of that web address.

The case is complicated, but in a nutshell, Bodog lost the case when Bodog owner and Canadian billionaire Calvin Ayre failed to show up in court to defend himself and his company against the lawsuit.

Ayre didn’t show up, according to published reports about the case, because he is afraid of coming to the U.S. for fear of being arrested for running an illegal Internet gambling operation, in violation of U.S. anti-online gambling laws.

In the last year, U.S. authorities have arrested foreign executives from other online gambling companies when they entered the U.S., most notably David Carruthers of Bet on Sports and Peter Dicks of Sportingbet.

Bodog, which offers online poker, online sports betting and online casino games, for now has relaunched itself at a new web address, www.newbodog.com.

But despite the new digs, Bodog is expected to lose untold millions of dollars worth of business in the coming months, as gamblers who log onto the old web address, www.bodog.com, do not get redirected to the new web address, www.newbodog.com.

Instead, www.bodog.com is now a dead link, offering only that the link is “unknown” and leading gamblers to likely believe that Bodog has gone out of business.

It hasn’t, but with most people not knowing that, it might as well be.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)