As they say, everything’s bigger in Texas, and their bad beat jackpots are no exception.
Bad beat jackpots are one of the most popular cash game promotions at poker rooms and casinos all around the world, as well as most poker apps. This past week, at the Lodge Card Club in Round Rock, Texas, the largest bad beat jackpot in Texas state history hit in a simple $1/$2/$5 Pot-Limit Omaha game.
On a 5♣4♣3♣ flop, two unnamed players held A♦K♦7♣6♣ and A♣K♠6♠2♣, two completely legitimate hands.
Both players flopped a straight flush, triggering the $289,376 bad beat jackpot. According to the Lodge’s bad beat jackpot rules, you have to have a losing straight flush on the flop in PLO in order to qualify.
If it were Texas Hold’em, you would have to lose with at least quad tens while in Big-O, you would have to lose with a flopped nine-high straight flush or better.
In the video below, you can see the phenomenal reaction around the table as the table realizes that they’ve triggered a massive jackpot, making everyone a huge winner.
According to the Lodge’s website, 50% of the jackpot went to the losing hand while 25% went to the winner. 25% of the money was distributed to the rest of the table.
These percentages come out of the remaining portion of the jackpot after it paid out a $200 room share to each and every cash game player that were playing at the time of the jackpot at both the Austin and San Antonio locations.
It’s unclear exactly how much the players were paid out as we have no idea how many players were paid a room share. If we approximate that there were 200 players involved in cash games at the two card rooms, that would leave a total of roughly $250,000 for the players at the table.
This would give the “loser” of the hand $125,000, the “winner” $62,500, while the other seven players would split the remaining $62,500 for a little under $9,000 each.
It’s worth remembering that at the end of September 2024, the second-largest bad beat jackpot in poker history hit at the Playground Poker Club in Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada, for $2.6M CAD (about $1.8M USD at the time).
You can play for bad beat jackpots at CoinPoker today, where seven jackpots have already been triggered since the start of 2025 at the time of writing.