One of the elements that was responsible for a ton of the buzz at Playground Poker Club as the World Cup of Cards began was the huge Bad Beat Jackpot. The Primary BBJ had grown to over $1.22M over the past several months of cash game play… until August 17th at about 5:30pm, when the huge jackpot was finally hit as a runner runner straight flush in spades to the Queen beat Quad Jacks.
The Primary BBJ at Playground Poker Club is a progressive jackpot that starts at $250,000. The minimum qualifying hand starts at Quad Aces and goes down every 4 weeks to a minimum of Quad 8s. The qualifying hand had been at that lowest qualifying hand level for many weeks and the Jackpot kept growing.
According to the players, the hand was played pretty slowly. Preflop, there was a raise and two calls, so three players saw the flop of 
. Elphege D, the eventual loser of the hand, held 
in early position, and chose to slow play – all three players saw the turn 
. Again there wasn’t much action.
Following the hand, Shane G (the player who won the hand), who held 
, reported that he was precisely aware of what he needed and the implications of hitting his card, because he was pretty sure his opponent had a monster. Lo and behold, the 
came on the river. He had hit his one-outer to make the runner-runner straight flush to the Q!
With that, the celebrations were on! Confetti “bombs” were set off, victory music to blasted throughout the room, and the wait staff brought champagne for everyone! It was an unforgettable experience – and not just because of the huge prizes!
Payout specifics:
$460,149 for hand loser – Quad Jacks (Elphege D)
$230,088 for hand winner – Spades straight flush to the Q (Shane G)
$32,870 for each of the 7 other players at the table
$1,224 room share for each of the other Hold’em cash players when the hand was hit.
Have no fear – if you didn’t win a piece of this huge jackpot – it resets to an impressive $250,000 – so if your great hand is beaten by an even greater hand, you can still win a big pile of cash!
