Hockey, millions of dollars make for a great night
Nobody ever wants to lose a poker hand. Except…EXCEPT if your poker hand is so good that it’s nearly a can’t lose situation. Make sense? If it does, you know about bad beat jackpots. And on Wednesday, poker players at Casino du Lac-Leamy in Quebec celebrated the second-largest bad beat jackpot in history, worth a total of CAD $2,513,553 (USD $1.8 million).
It was a great day all around for the patrons of the Casino du Lac-Leamy poker room, as they were also watching the Montreal Canadiens clinch a spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, who were next-to-last in the overall NHL standings on December 1. It is their first playoff appearance since the 2020-2021 season, when they made the Stanley Cup Final.
Back to poker, the casino poker room’s rules state that a hand qualifies for the bad beat jackpot if quad 10’s or better loses. Both players must use both of their hole cards. While the casino’s website does not have the rest of the rules, typically the hand must go to showdown and the players cannot tip each other off on what they are holding.
The winner of the jackpot hand Wednesday night turned a straight flush, while the loser rivered quad Ten’s.
But the loser was the real winner, as they received the biggest chunk of the bad beat jackpot, CAD $1,005,421 (USD $726,000). The hand’s winner got CAD $502,711 (USD $363,000) and the other six players at the table received CAD $84,000 (USD $60,000) each.
But that’s not all. Everybody seated in the poker room also benefited from the bad beat. In all, 38 other poker players won CAD $13,000 (USD $9,400) each.
Play poker in Quebec
There must be something in that French-Canadian water, as the largest bad beat jackpot was also hit in Quebec, in 2023 at the Playground Poker Club. In that hand, Hoan Truong flopped quad 10’s, but Marc Andre turned a straight flush. The bad beat jackpot at that moment was CAD $2,590,185 (USD $1.9 million).
Bad beat jackpots, while amazing when they hit, do come with a price, as they are funded by the players. Word from a Reddit poster who was at another table at the time of the Casino du Lac-Leamy bad beat jackpot hand is that the poker room takes CAD $2 per hand to fund “various promotions,” which likely includes the bad beat jackpot.
Professional players usually prefer to play at non-jackpot tables (depending on the possibility at the specific poker room) because they don’t want to give up the extra money per pot for such a slim chance at winning, but recreational players often love it, as it offers a chance at a once-in-a-lifetime windfall.
Image credit: CNW Group/Loto-Québec
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