Online poker platforms have found a way to make you feel a bit better after experiencing a bad beat. That’s why some of them offer the popular Bad Beat Jackpot. To tell you more about it, we first have to discuss what a bad beat actually is.
What’s a Bad Beat in Poker?
The name of this phenomenon is pretty self-explanatory – it’s when you get beat and feel bad about it. More specifically, a ‘bad beat’ is when the odds were painstakingly in a player’s favor, only the cards were not.
For example, let’s say you are playing Texas Hold’em and you get four-of-a-kind with Jacks, typically an ideal play. When an opponent ends up having four Kings, then that is considered a bad beat.
The Bad Beat Jackpot helps the bummed out player get some solace by providing rewards to the loser. To show you how it works, we’ll talk about the Jackpot offered at BetOnline.
Other poker platforms that may offer similar rewards may have slightly different rules, but what we’ll discuss in this article is pretty much similar for every Bad Beat Jackpot.
Bad Beat Jackpot – How Does It Work?
The Bad Beat Jackpot can only be awarded if you play at an online table that’s designated as such. It’s a progressive type of jackpot, meaning a small portion of your bet is taken and added to the jackpot, which rises as long as nobody wins it.
To receive the jackpot, you need to have four-of-a-kind deuces or above, and lose to a better hand. The jackpot is automatically activated then, and you get to receive money.
Here’s how BetOnline’s poker room distributes the jackpot.
- 20% gets the player who experienced the bad beat (after all, they need it the most in this case).
- 15% goes to the winner of the hand (the winner will feel bad if they don’t get anything for winning the hand).
- 12,5% is awarded to the players at the table
- 12,5% is awarded to other Bad Beat Jackpot tables
- 35% is used for reseeding
- 5% fee
If you’re lucky enough that nobody had won a Bad Beat Jackpot for some time, you’ll be able to receive a lot of money. For example, a player named RandomFruit has won the jackpot of $198,944.69 on BetOnline.
As you can see, the good news is that you can receive a piece of the prize even if you’re not one of the players taking part in the hand. In fact, you don’t even have to sit at the same table. All you have to do is play poker at one of the active Bad Beat Jackpot tables and be active when someone wins it.
The jackpots take place irregularly, as they are subject to pure chance. For example, there were three jackpots in August 2020 alone and five jackpots in April 2020, but only one in July and none in June.
The one jackpot that took place in July was much higher compared to others as the progressive jackpot prize went up. Therefore, if you’re interested in playing this type of poker, make sure to check out BetOnline and its poker offer on our website.