'Bad beat' prize keeps poker players at tables

[clevfan]

'Bad beat' prize keeps poker players at tables

Donald McArthur
Windsor Star
Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Red-eyed card sharks in Caesars Windsor poker room are logging overtime in a bid to win their share of a record "bad beat" jackpot that has surpassed $50,000 and grows bigger every day.

"It's definitely the talk of the room," Windsor poker player Steve Anger, 31, said Monday while taking a break between hands of Texas Hold 'em.

"Over the holidays, it's been a zoo in here. It's way busier than normal."

Ordinarily, there would be one or two tables in action on a weekday, but there were six full tables and a waiting list shortly before 4 p.m. Monday. All 14 tables were packed on the weekend, with players wary of going to the bathroom or for a smoke for fear of missing a career payout.

The progressive jackpot -- which pops when a full house of aces over tens or better is beaten by a higher full house, four of a kind or a straight flush -- stood Monday at $53,600, double its previous high.

"It generates a lot of buzz and energy and everyone absolutely loves it," said Caesars Windsor spokeswoman Holly Ward. "It's such a great option to have in the poker room because anyone can win."

The fact this pregnant pot hasn't been won in a month doesn't make it any more likely to hit now than immediately after the last payout, said Myron Hlynka, a professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Windsor.

"The cards are memoryless. They don't know that there's been this long period of time," he said.

"The chances of it happening are just the same as they were before. The fact that there's been a long time since something happened, that makes no difference."

Anger, who has played poker professionally for four years and who was featured on ESPN's TV table on Day 1 of the recent World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, said the escalating jackpot has caused some players to adjust their playing styles.

Instead of making big bets on promising flops, normally aggressive players are meekly checking their hands, hoping to spike a winning -- or losing -- combination of cards on the turn and river.

A dollar from every pot over $20 goes into the bad beat kitty, which rolls over every morning. The jackpot has been won about 15 times since it was introduced in August, with an average payout of $20,000. One crazy day, the bad beat jackpot hit once and then popped again less than 20 minutes later.

Fifty per cent of the jackpot goes to the player who experiences the bad beat -- a term for a superior poker hand that improbably loses to a statistically inferior one -- and 25 per cent goes to the player that beat him. Just for being there, the rest of the players at the table split the remaining 25 per cent.

At $53,600, the player with the bad beat hand would get $26,800, the player that beat him would get $13,400 and the remaining players would split $13,400, which would work out to $1,675 each at a 10-person table.

The sharks pulling marathon sessions at Caesars understand mathematics and probabilities better than most -- they make their living exploiting slight statistical edges -- but many are still reluctant to go home for fear the jackpot will be won in their absence. There is method to their madness, said Hlynka.

Although he didn't want to promote gambling and stressed most gamblers lose in the long run, Hlynka said the groggy players logging overtime in the poker room are increasing their chances of hitting the jackpot.

"If you play for two hours then you are twice as likely to win this bad beat jackpot as you are if you play for one hour," said Hlynka. "Each hand has a chance of getting this jackpot so the more hands you play, the more likely you are to get it."

Bad beat jackpots are offered at Detroit casinos but they don't pay out nearly as often as at Caesars because the qualifications are more stringent.

"It's the easiest bad beat to hit out of anywhere I've played and I've played poker almost everywhere," said Anger, who has experienced his fair share of bad beats but never been paid for them.

"I've been playing cards for 10 years and I've never even been in the room when a bad beat jackpot has gone off."