Getting a bad beat at the online poker table doesn’t have to be a dreaded occurence. Not when the poker table is at America’s Cardroom. And not when the bad beat is eligible for the site’s progressive Bad Beat Jackpot.
Put simply, a bad beat is a hand that shouldn’t have lost, but did. To qualify as a bad beat in America’s Cardroom’s book, that hand must be at least four-of-a-kind 8s or higher and it must lose. Also to qualify, both of the player’s hole cards must be used in order to make the qualifying hand.
When the bad beat jackpot is hit, America’s Cardroom pays out 30% of it to the person who hit the jackpot (i.e. the one holding the bad beat hand), 20% of it to the hand’s winner, and divides 10% among the remaining players at the table (provided the eligible players have participated in at least one hand where a contribution was made to the bad beat jackpot). Then 30% of it is used to reseed the next bad beat jackpot and 10% of it goes to the house.
Players must be playing on jackpot tables in order to be eligible for the bad beat jackpot. At every Texas Hold’em table that is marked in the Americas Cardroom lobby with Jackpot and which has at least 4 active players dealt into a hand, a Jackpot fee will be taken by the house to feed the Bad Beat Jackpot and The Beast. That fee is $0.33 for games at table stakes of $2/$4 or higher and $0.08 for everything lower.