Bad Beat Jackpot Payout of $100,000 Denied Over Rule Infraction

07:54
20 Apr

A straight flush versus quads at a Bad Beat Jackpot table would normally trigger a payout, but a poker room in Texas declined to honor the hand when a player apparently revealed his cards before all betting action had been completed.

The miscue occurred at the San Antonio Poker Palace earlier this month. The card room's decision to nullify the payout caused a bit of a furor on social media as poker players both for and against the ruling chimed in.

Leading the charge against the Poker Palace was Alex Jacob, who gained considerable fame and notoriety in 2015 as a six-time Jeopardy! champ, winning $151,802. The former poker pro with lifetime tournament earnings of $2.6 million then snared $250K more in Jeopardy's Tournament of Champions.

"This casino cheated these players out of $100k," Jacob tweeted. "Don’t offer a jackpot like this if you’re gonna weasel out of it when someone actually gets four of a kind vs. a straight flush."

Whether or not any weaseling was in play is a matter of opinion. Video footage of the hand - minus any audio - appears to show the player with the straight flush expose his cards, followed by the player with quads tossing his last few chips into the pot. Take a look:

The poster of the tweet also included a since-deleted Facebook post from the poker room explaining why the payout was denied. Rules are rules, one could argue, and many commenters said exactly that.

However, the player with quads wouldn't fold in that situation, as was succinctly stated in the following reply:

@Futuristicjazz1 - "These is no scenario in which the quads are folding here if the players know there's a bad beat jackpot in play, so it's irrelevant that the straight flush is shown. Quads always call here, you literally only win by doing it. Pay him."

As per the poker room's BBJ payout structure, the losing hand with quads was worth $50,000, the winning hand with the straight flush would have scored $25,000, and all the other players at the table were set to divvy up $25,000.

What do you think? Should the card club honor the BBJ payout?