On September 28th, 2024, the second-biggest bad beat jackpot in poker history hit at the Playground Poker Club in Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada, just outside of Montreal.
The Playground is known worldwide for their insanely-big bad beat jackpots, including the world record which hit in August 2023 in a $1/$2 no-limit hold’em cash game for CAD $2,590,185 (approximately $1.9 million USD).
This past week, the huge jackpot was cracked to the tune of CAD $2,275,388. At the time of the jackpot, this was converted to roughly $1.7 million USD.
The “losing player”, Elie, won the lion’s share of the jackpot when his quad nines were cracked by the “winning player”, Yann, who had quad aces. This took place in a $2/$5 no-limit hold’em cash game.
According to the Playground’s rules, the “losing” player receives a 40% share of the jackpot while the “winning” player receives a 20% share. The seven remaining players at the table split 20% of the jackpot while all the other players playing in the poker room when the jackpot hit split the remaining 20% of the pot.
This meant Elie received CAD $864,000 (USD $640,004), Yann received CAD $455,077 (USD $337,096), while each of the other seven players seated at their table all won CAD $65,011 (USD $48,156). That’s certainly worth a celebration.
There’s no telling how many players were in the room at the time of the jackpot, but getting a share of the remaining 20% of the jackpot (CAD $455,077 / USD $337,096) would be enough to send the majority of the players home with a smile on their face. The Playground is home to over 60 poker tables in their poker room.
With the jackpot being claimed, the Playground has reseeded the jackpot back to about CAD $664,000, roughly $500,000 USD. The jackpot is much more difficult to hit than other poker rooms around the world, which translates into wildly-huge bad beat jackpots.
Players must have their quad aces beaten during the first four weeks of the jackpot in order to trigger it. Every four weeks, the bad beat jackpot difficulty relaxes by one hand rank. For instance, from weeks 5-8, having quad kings cracked will set off the jackpot, while a minimum of quad queens will do the job in weeks 9-12 (and so on).
Back on August 2nd, 2023, the world-record CAD $2,590,185 (approximately $1.9 million USD) jackpot was won by Hoan Truong at the Playground when his flopped quad tens were cracked by Marc Andre Ouellon’s straight flush in a $1/$2 game.
Truong won CAD $984,270 (roughly $722,000 USD) with Ouellon taking home CAD $492,135 (roughly $361,000 USD) while the table share was CAD $82,003 (roughly $31,000 USD).