Bad Beat Jackpot Question

There was a time I was playing in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Park Casino. They had something going on at the time that I was unfamiliar with. It was the bad beat jackpot. For those of you who don't know what the bad beat jackpot is, I will explain it.

The bad beat jackpot basically works like this. The casino picks a type of hand that has to get beaten. Usually it is a really strong hand. On this occasion, the bad beat jackpot hand that had to get beat at the Hollywood Park Casino was aces full of anything. Meaning, if you made a full house, that was aces full of something else, you had a qualifying hand for the bad beat jackpot.

However, it wasn't quite that easy. You had to make aces full by using both of your hole cards, you couldn't use just one. After you made aces full by using both hole cards, you had to lose to somebody who had a stronger hand and were also using both of their hold cards. Trust me when I tell you, it wasn't something that happened easily. In the two weeks that I was playing at the Hollywood Park Casino, I only saw it happen once.

When these magical sets of circumstances come together. The player with the losing hand gets the lion's share of the jackpot. The player who gave the beat usually gets about 25 to 30 percent of it. The remaining amount is dispersed amongst the players who were at the table and in the hand when it hit, with a small amount staying to rebuild the jackpot.

That has been my experience with the bad beat jackpots at brick and mortar casinos. The online bad beat jackpots appear to be a little different. The ones I have seen tend to have tougher requirements. For starters, you have to lose with four of a kind or better and usually a high four of a kind like eights or better.

The online bad beat jackpot hands also appear to only be at the micro level tables. I'm not a big fan of playing down there since the rake is tremendous and usually does not make the sit worth it. Every pot has to contribute a little to the jackpot so it is a little harder to make a profit. Usually people playing down there are playing for fun and hoping to hit the jackpot. However, they will still tend to play a lot of hands that couldn't possibly hit.

In any regard, I think these kinds of bad beat jackpot games are designed exclusively for the house. I know they hit on occasion, but I don't know anybody who has taken one down. If you do, I would love to hear from them and know what site it happened on as well as the hand that came together for it to work. I'm always interested in hearing about these low probability combination hands coming together. I wouldn't recommend trying to build a bankroll off these games but if you are choosing to play them for fun, best of luck!