Bad beat jackpots are a product of online poker operators who wanted to give players a chance to win big for the worst bad beats.
BetOnline has offered a bad beat jackpot for years. Players must compete at those tables that an qualify for the jackpot, which includes paying extra rake. That rake creates the jackpot. Currently, BetOnline takes $0.10 from every $4 in every pot – at BBJ-qualifying cash game tables – for the jackpot, with the maximum set at $0.50 per hand.
What is a Bad Beat?
Poker players have varying ideas of what comprises a bad beat. That means BetOnline has to set parameters.
A hand will trigger a BBJ if:
- four or more players are in the hand,
- a player must lose a hand with four-of-a-kind deuces or better,
- both hole cards are included in the winning hand,
- players with four-of-a-kind had two of those four as their hole cards, and
- the hand goes to a showdown.
The loser of the qualifying hand will win 20% of the jackpot, with 15% going to the winner of that hand. All other players at that table split 12.5% of the jackpot, and all other players at all tables will split the other 12.5% of the jackpot. BetOnline then takes a 5% fee from the remaining jackpot, and the other 35% reseeds the jackpot for the next time.
To show how BBJs hit and pay out, we only need to look at two recent bad beat jackpot hits.
Two Jackpots July 18-25
It’s not unheard of for bad beat jackpots to hit close together. But two within a one-week span of time is notable.
The first of these two happened on July 18, 2022. It was a quads-over-quads hand at a No Limit Hold’em Six-Max table with stakes of $1/$2. The bad beat jackpot was at $208,799.01.
One week later, the jackpot was back up to $114, 748.40 when it hit again. It happened at yet another NLHE 6-Max table, though the stakes were lower at $0.50/$1.
The BBJ has yet to hit in August, but it grows daily as more people play at those tables.
