The second largest bad beat jackpot in live poker history — CAD $2,275,388 (approximately $1.7 million USD) — hit recently at Playground Poker Club in Quebec, Canada.
Playground has played host to many of the biggest bad beat jackpots ever, and that includes the biggest of them all. One poker player took the largest share of a $1.9 million (USD) bad beat pot in August 2023, a record that still stands.
Poker Bad Beat Jackpot Details
A $2/$5 no-limit hold’em cash game player named Elie picked up 9♠9♣ in a hand on Sept. 27 at the popular Canadian poker room. The board would run out A♣9♥K♣9♦A♠, making his hand unbeatable.
You might be wondering how the second nuts could possibly be unbeatable, and that is because a loss with quads against better quads would trigger the bad beat jackpot. Another player in the game named Yann did indeed have the A♥A♦ in the hole for a superior four-of-a-kind. That meant the near-record bad beat jackpot had set off and all the players in the game were about to get paid.
The card room’s bad beat jackpot rules state that the loser of the hand receives 40% of the pot, which came out to CAD $864,000 (USD $640,004) in this case. Yann earned 20% of the pot, or CAD $455,077 (USD $337,096).
The seven remaining players who were seated at the table during the $2/$5 game split 20% of the pot, each receiving CAD $65,011 (USD $48,156). And the players in other games around the room evenly split the remaining 20% of the bad beat jackpot.
Playground Poker Club always keeps a backup progressive pot running for when a bad beat jackpot hits so there’s still plenty of money left over. The jackpot reseeded to over CAD $664,000 on Sept. 27.
Hitting the BBJ at Playground is tougher than in many poker rooms, and that is why the payouts often beat or nearly beat all time records. Setting off the bad beat jackpot requires quads to be beaten by a better hand and that each player must use both hole cards.
Each week, the minimum qualifying hand changes, however. Once a bad beat jackpot hits, the next week’s qualifying losing hand resets to quad aces, and then the quad qualifier drops in value by one weekly until reaching quad deuces. The complete set of rules are available on Playground’s website.
Largest Bad Beat Jackpot in History Hits in Canada
*Images courtesy of Playground Poker Club