Insane Hand at the Montreal Playground Poker Club Results in $1.2 Million Bad Beat Payout

When your opponent hits a one-outer on the river, you're usually not in the mood for celebration. Elphege Delarosbi may disagree, however, since when his turned quad Jacks were cracked by a riverred straight flush at a $1/$2 cash game table - although he did lose the pot - he received a bad beat jackpot payout of $460,149. The other players in the club at the time got the rest of the $1.2 million jackpot money.

Most casinos and poker rooms have bad beat payouts, it could be as little as 50 bucks if you lose a hand with pocket aces. Certainly a good remedy for a poker player's frustration after the cards fall in a way they're not supposed to, according to probability theory.

But these bad beat payouts usually don't get you life changing money. Unless you play in the Playground Poker Club in Montreal, Canada - their house rules are a little different. The bad beat jackpot starts at $250,000 and you need to lose with at least quad Aces in order to claim it. After three weeks, if nobody is "unlucky" enough to win it, the prize pool grows and now you only need four Kings to be cracked to be eligible. This pattern repeats every three week, more money goes into the jackpot and you need lower and lower losing quads to win.

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Quad 8's is the lowest the jackpot hand goes, it was there for weeks and weeks, but the jackpot money continued to grow up to over $1.2 million. 

In a $1/$2 cash game Delarosbi got dealt pocket Jacks, the flop came J69 with the 9 of spades, then his fourth Knave (spade) fell on the turn, giving him his jackpot cracking quads. His opponent, Shane Galle held Q9 suited of spades, meaning he had one out on the turn, and that one out card, 10s did happen to come on the river. 

Delarosbi got paid $460,159 (40% of the jackpot) for his bad beat, the winning player, Galle also got a piece of the jackpot money, $230,088 (20%). The rest of the players at the table shared another 20%, which amounted to $32,870 each; and finally, everybody playing poker at any table in the Playground Poker Club received the remaining 20% of the prize, that was $1,224 for each player.

This also means that for the next three weeks, you need to lose with quad Aces to hit the jackpot again in the Montreal poker club and you'd "only" get 40% of $250,000 for it.