Bad beat jackpot a record for state casinos
Poker players have their eyes on a big jackpot at Palm Beach Kennel Club.
The "bad beat" jackpot at the poker room has grown to over $187,000, the highest ever in a state-regulated casino.
A "bad beat" occurs when one player has a seemingly unbeatable hand, only to lose. Example: Your four jacks lose to someone's four queens. When a bad beat jackpot hits, the person who lost gets half the jackpot, the hand winner gets one-fourth, and the rest of the table splits what's left.
Poker action has picked up considerably at Palm Beach Kennel, Card room manager Noah Carbone said.
"It's been a tremendous boost for business," he said. "You'll hear a table where it gets close get louder, then quiet down. But someone's going to hit it."
The jackpot, creating by the club pulling $1 per hand played at each table, has been building for 47 days. It usually hits every nine days, he said. Previous record: $70,000 or so. At Dania, the bad beat hit $52,000 recently (see my Feb. 6 post below; FYI, their PR was wrong, the loser had Aces over Jacks).
In Texas Hold 'em, the minimum hand for a bad beat at PB Kennel is a full house of Aces over jacks. Because there is now such a high payoff for two players to hit four-of-a-kind, for example, at a table, players are staying in with hands they normally wouldn't, Carbone notes.
"People who normally would fold small pairs are trying to hit the quads. It makes sense mathematically because the payout is so high," he said.
PB Kennel also has 7-card stud and Omaha players, and those players are rolled into the same bad beat jackpot, Carbone said. The card room has about 40 tables, usually 30 are the $100 buy-in no-limit Texas Hold' em, 4-5 are low-limit Hold'em, 4-5 are 7-card stud and one Omaha, he said.
To hit a bad beat in 7-card stud, a player must have at least four deuces. In Omaha, at least four jacks. Many places have separate jackpots, he said.
"We wanted the players to still play their favorite games. Not have the stud players obligated to play Hold ‘em," he said. "We did extensive research and ran simulations and projected what level to make it fair."
The strategy also changes for those with killer hands, or should, he said. He noted that one player had four of a kind, and overbet to run other players out. Had she checked, another player would have hit a hand high enough to make for a bad beat.
"It was an $85,000 decision," Carbone said.
