We’ve all seen it happen while we play online poker games. You’ll be holding pocket rockets and the guy you’re playing against somehow hits a straight flush while holding 4-8 suited.  It’s something that happens so frequently and is so frustrating that it’s become part of poker lingo: the bad beat. This happens in every casino, at an online poker tournament and on land.

 

 

For the professional and amateur player alike, bad beats are frustrating for two primary reasons.  In the first, a player is rewarded for mathematically unsound play, meaning they ignored the odds and probabilities and continued to play a hand they were almost sure to lose.  They either called a bet despite having neither the best possible hand at any given time nor the right pot odds.  The second scenario is more dramatic, in which a strong hand is beaten by an even stronger one.  In Casino Royale, The Kid and Le Chiffre each lose while holding a full house: their opponents reveal a straight flush.

One poker room believes you should be rewarded for these turns of bad luck, and that’s why UltimateBet has begun offering Bad Beat Jackpots to their players.  When you play at one of the poker room’s specially designated tables, $.50 is collected from the pot for each hand that is raked $.25 or more.  That $.50 is added to the growing jackpot until one player holding four 8s or better loses to someone else.

When the jackpot is hit, the money is divided in such a way that everyone wins!  25% of the jackpot amount rolls into the next jackpot, ensuring that it has a healthy head start and the house collects 10%.  The remaining 65% is divided up thusly: 50% goes to the person who held the bad beat hand and 25% goes to the winner.  $1000 goes to every other player at the bad beat table, and the rest is divided among every other bad beat jackpot player con currently playing the same game type and stakes. There’s nothing like bonus poker to make a bad beat less frustrating.