The Montreal-area Playground Poker Club, the largest cash-game poker room in Canada, has topped its own world record for the richest bad-beat jackpot ever paid. On Wednesday, players at a modest $1/$2 no-limit hold'em table had a seat at what turned into a CAD $2,590,185 jackpot. Translated to US dollars, the jackpot was worth USD $1,937,645.
Wednesday's record jackpot broke the previous world record of CAD $2,228,425, which was set in June of 2022. That also took place at Playground Poker, which is on the Kahnawake Reserve just south of Montreal. The room specializes in creating and marketing oversized bad-beat jackpots, with qualifying hands higher than most poker rooms. At Playground Poker, it might take quad aces being beat to crack the BBJ if it's already been recently hit. The qualifying losing hand slowly drops over time, but is never lower than quad deuces. The jackpot also takes $2 drop per pot from each raked hand at the eligible tables, helping build the jackpot quickly.
Wednesday's record-setting jackpot easily topped the quad-deuces threshold, which had been in place for a couple of months. Playground Poker did not identify the players involved, but the bad-beat-suffering player in the hand -- and, eventually, the winner of the largest share of the jackpot -- flopped an all-but insurmountable quad tens on a flop of 8d-Th-Td. However, another player in the hand held 6d-9d, for a gutshot to the ten-high straight flush, and when the turn brought that 7d to fill in the straight flush, a BBJ-qualifying pot was assured.
A meaningless 2d completed the board, and players throughout the room began celebrating. Playground Poker soon posted on its Facebook account, "Congratulations to the loser of the hand, the winner, everyone at the table and all other signed-in NLHL players! You have made history! 🍾🥂"
According to Playground's published bad-beat jackpot rules, the player whose quad tens were beaten received 40 percent of the jackpot amount. The player with the ten-high straight flush received 20%, another 20 percent was split among other players at the table, and the remaining 20% went to players who were registered and playing at other BBJ-eligible tables in the room. All payouts were subject to a mandatory 5% deduction as a gratuity for the room's staff.
Playground also noted that even as the celebration continued, the bad-beat backpot had already been reseeded at just over $700,000.
Images source: Facebook / Playground Poker Club
