Quad queens at the Wynn, a few hands after losing with quad jacks. Read below for the best bad beat jackpots in Vegas.

This is not a bad beat story, though it starts with one.

This is a story about bad beat jackpots, and the lack thereof.

Playing a 1-3NL game the other day, I raised to $12 in late position with JhJd.

An older man — here’s him as a younger man, seriously — called on the button, one of the blinds called and the limper directly to my right called.

The flop was a dream: Js5c7c. And it was checked to me, so I bet big, hoping to build it up with one of the suckers stupid enough to call my preflop raise.

To my delight, the button moved in for $150. The blind folded and the limper contemplated.

“Please call, please call, please call,” I thought.

And he shoved for $200.

Oh boy, dreams do come true.

I tossed a handful of chips over the line, indicating my insta-call confidence. Two all-ins and I had top set. How easy is this game?

The dealer flipped the 4c on the turn — crap, maybe one of them hit a flush, but I could still boat up — and the Jc on the river.

Oh yeah, quads!

“I have quads,” I said proudly, revealing all of the jacks.

The elation lasted only a split second. The guy to my right popped out of his seat and said, “Quads are no good. Straight flush.” And he revealed the 6c8c.

This was at Wynn, where there is no bad beat jackpot.

So I texted comrades about my miserable luck. I tweeted that I had lost with quads.

A Twitter follower replied that if I had been playing at Caesars Palace, I could have been $9,000 or $10,000 richer.

That got me thinking.

Another friend called the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, where I had played regularly for the past 5 years.

Their hold’em jackpot was at $66,000.

The bad beat jackpot might be common in Biloxi casinos and some in California. But it’s not really a Vegas thing. At least in some of the bigger poker rooms where I play the most, such as Aria, Bellagio, MGM, Venetian and Wynn.

I didn’t tilt off the rest of my money — actually made a little that day at Wynn — and won a nice $29 pot when I flopped quads on a QdQsTh board a few hands later.

So as I returned from a Pokerati meeting the next afternoon, I stopped by the Palace Station casino. Station casinos offer a bad beat that is distributed throughout all 8 properties.

Reminders of the bad beat jackpot flashed repeatedly on the wall-mounted TV inside the 9-table room. I jumped in a new limit hold’em table.

“Let’s get the cards in the air, in case the jackpot hits,” one of the grizzled regulars said.

“It’s jackpot time,” another man announced.

Jackpot this … jackpot that … jackpot up his sleeve … jackpot, jackpot, jackpot.

It’s the only word I could hear.

General poker theory goes that players shouldn’t be concerned about a jackpot when on the grind. But it certainly floods your mind after you hit a hand that could have been.

I checked with Vegas poker rooms and found the ones that pay for losing.

Here’s a breakdown:

• The rake at Caesars, with a bad beat jackpot for any quads losing, is 10 percent up to $5 plus $1 for the jackpot. Currently, the jackpot is at about $30,000. If it hits, 40 percent goes to the player who loses the hand, 20 percent goes to the winner and there’s a 40 percent table share.

• At any of the Station casinos, there’s a $4 rake with $1 taken for the jackpot, and the bad beat jackpot is broken down a little differently. The losing hand gets $30,000, the winning hand gets $20,000 and the rest of the jackpot is split up among all poker players at any of the 8 other Station properties. (That means the winner and loser would also get a player share.) Currently, the jackpot is about $100,000.

• Some of the smaller rooms in Vegas offer a variety of payouts for bad beats at different levels. Losing with aces full or better at Excalibur earns 40 percent of a small jackpot, while 20 percent goes to the winner of the hand and 40 percent is divided among the table. Excalibur takes a $4 rake plus $1 for the jackpot.

• Bally’s started a bad beat jackpot promotion April 1. To qualify for a chunk of the $10,000, a player must lose with quads or better. The loser of the hand receives $4,000, the winner receives $3,000 and the table splits up the remaining $3,000. Bally’s takes a $5 rake plus $1 for the jackpot.

• At the Flamingo, there’s a $2,000 bad beat jackpot if 4 of a kind or better is beaten, with $1,000 going to the player with the losing hand, $500 going to the winner and the table splitting $1,000. The Flamingo takes a $5 rake plus $1 for the promotion.

• To qualify for the progressive $50,000 bad beat jackpot at The Orleans a play must lose with 4 of a kind, using both hole cards. The loser of the hand receives 45 percent, the winner receives 27 percent, while the table shares the rest. Orleans takes a $3 max rake, plus $1 for the jackpot.

• Aces full of 10s beat by quads or better qualifies for the $2,000 jackpot at Riviera, where $599 is distributed to the losing hand, $401 is awarded to the winning hand and the table splits the remaining $1,000. The Riv takes a $4 rake, plus $2 for the jackpot, and their promotions can change from week to week.

• If you lose with aces full — again, using both hole cards — Harrah’s you qualify for a small bad beat jackpot. There, $500 goes to the player with the losing hand, $200 goes to the winning hand and everyone at the table receives $50. Harrah’s takes a $5 rake, with $1 for the jackpot.

So maybe I missed out on some extra coin. But if I had been playing elsewhere, I would never have been dealt that hand. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Cantor Gaming will open a new poker room at the Palms, and hopefully get new felts for Pokerati's signature game.

Cantor Gaming confirmed recently that an 8-table poker room will be part of the Palms’ redesigned sportsbook (currently under construction) and say the new room will be state of the art in style and technology. Sources at Palms tell me that one of the tables will be equipped with hole card cams, a la Live at the Bike.

“We are honored that Palms has chosen us to manage their poker area,” Lee M. Amaitis, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cantor Gaming said in a press release. “By situating poker within the sports book we can offer customers maximum entertainment and convenience.”

Because of the partnership, the current staff at Palms must re-apply for new jobs with Cantor if they want to stick around. A spokesman for Cantor did not immediately respond to an inquiry seeking further details about the new poker room, and the cost of the project was not disclosed.

Late last year, the Las Vegas-based gaming company unveiled a new sports book at Venetian, the first phase of $30 million in renovations. Cantor has been taking over sportsbooks across Las Vegas — including the Venetian, Tropicana, Hard Rock, M Resort, and Cosmopolitan — but Palms will be the first location to open with a poker room as part of its design.

“Our decision to relocate the poker room to the new race and sports book was a natural one given the synergies that exist between poker players and sports bettors,” said Joseph A. Magliarditi, President of Palms.

“We are confident that a sleek new poker room will be a spectacular addition to our resort and one that offers poker fans the ultimate in poker playing experiences.”

Dan Michalski, who runs this site and has hosted a weekly half no-limit hold’em, half pot-limit Omaha game at the Palms for the past year, wouldn’t say much about the future of Pokerati’s relationship with the casino. (And he acts surprised when I can’t get a corporate casino flak to answer my questions!)

“Stay tuned,” Dan said in a text message.

So I guess that means there may only be a few more weeks to take his money in the Pokerati game — at least at the current past-its-prime Palms poker room.

Some of what I’ve picked up lately:

Karina Jett is the MGM’s new poker room ambassador, meaning she will promote the room and host the weekly $120 HORSE event at 7:15pm every Tuesday. Jett has hosted the HORSEament previously at the Palms and then M Resort before settling into her new gig at MGM. The inaugural running at MGM featured a drinks-flowing pre-party that saw Cyndy Violette, Gavin Smith, Layne Flack, Allen Kessler, and Erik Seidel.

DonkDown Radio founder Bryan Micon won the tournament last week, beating a pro-filled field of about 80 for a $2k score, along with besting several others in a last-longer bet that paid an added $4k. The next running, earlier this week, attracted a field of about 60 players.

Meanwhile, WPT Executive Tour Director Matt Savage is also on board with MGM, serving as tournament director for the upcoming Grand Challenge Tournament series. Savage apparently was looking for something else to do in Vegas now that the Epic events are off his calendar.

Occupy Aria?
Players take Ivey Room mixed game back to Bellagio

This hasn’t been confirmed yet, but according to at least one regular player in one of the bigger regular games in Vegas:

For everyone that plans on playing mixgames in Las Vegas…We are no longer playing at Aria… Come join us everyday at @BellagioPoker

— Mike Thorpe (@RealCrazyMike) March 21, 2012

Politics don’t allow us to be able to play at Aria now…Aria is a great place and has great staff and I love it and prefer Aria overall.

— Mike Thorpe (@RealCrazyMike) March 21, 2012

I Hate politics… So easier to move to Bellagio…Come join us everyday @BellagioPoker and get your picture for “playing with this guy”

— Mike Thorpe (@RealCrazyMike) March 21, 2012

FWIW I saw Jean Robert Belande (@BrokeLivingJRB) still playing in Ivey’s room with David Williams (@DWPoker) just last night, so there could be more to this schism. If it’s all political, as Crazy Mike says, that could explain why Barack Obama was in town yesterday.

Under New Management
@WynnPoker Classic draws heat

The Wynn has a new poker room director, Joe Vigurs, a former graveyard shift manager at Venetian. And true to form, poker players on 2+2 and Twitter welcomed him to the fray by getting panties in serious wads at the Wynn Classic, which wrapped up last week. Jimmy Fricke called the preliminary events “absolutely brutal” while Allen Kessler said fellow pros complained that the main event was “the worst run 5k ever.” Other complaints included skipped blind levels and a floor supervisor allowing David Levy to “buy the button” in a tournament when he moved tables. For all the reported wrinkles, however, several local tournament grinders at Wynn tell me they “thoroughly enjoyed” the structures.

O'Sheas, and it's "strip poker" room is closing April 30

Last Call
O’Sheas Closing to Make Room for Caesars Wheel

Time is running out to donk around with the drunks. O’Sheas, the 23-year-old center-strip hub of drunken poker, and drunken everything, is shutting down April 30 to make room for Caesars Entertainment’s new $500 million Linq project, expected to open next year.

The Irish-themed casino has been known as a “break-in” room for poker room staff across Vegas, and many of them work there part time. Caesars notified them earlier this year that these jobs would be eliminated, though they were offered work during the WSOP.

There was no “strip poker” Saturday, because St. Patrick’s Day crowds overwhelmingly packed the front of O’Sheas. But my friend Andrew Neeme (@andrewneeme) and I played a few hours of 2-6 spread limit and 1-2 no-limit hold’em in the four-table poker room just a few feet away from the beer pong section. We each collected a little holiday green, as most of the players drank far more beers than us.

Until it closes, O’Sheas will continue to offer daily tournaments and their standard 1/2NL and 2-6 spread limit cash games. The poker room at the Imperial Palace is also expected to close temporarily as the Linq construction gets underway. Part of the plan includes tearing down O’Sheas to make room for a 550-foot tall “observation wheel” called the Las Vegas High Roller.

Also-Rans around Town …

Silverton and Fitzgeralds recently closed their poker rooms. The former because they simply had no players, and the latter seems to fit with a rebranding of the downtown casino. The name is changing to the D, and a Fremont-facing bar will replace the rainbow marquee, which eventually will be headed to the nearby Neon Boneyard.

You won’t get paid while attending the academy, but as far as I can tell you don’t have to pay either. Caesars promises to equip you with the skills to pitch cards and cut chips at RIO All Suites Hotel from May 27 to July 16, aka the 2012 World Series. A session in late April provides advanced lessons for dealing non-hold’em games.
I’m still waiting for a response on my application. If I get accepted, I hope to document the experience. And since Caesars stresses “good customer service skills,” we’ll do it with a smile.

The job ad also says “a neat professional appearance and good personal hygiene are essential.” That might narrow the competition in the poker community. But I know I’m ready to shave and shower before I shuffle up and deal.

The Stratosphere’s quaint 10-table poker room sits in the back of the casino, past a row of slot machines, craps tables, another row of slot machines, down the ramp past Roxy’s Diner, near the escalators to the Top of the World restaurant — just before the Double Down Pit and Back Alley Bar. On Thursday, there was a sole 1-2NL table of action about 30 minutes before the nightly tournament.

You’d hardly know that this room has supposedly become the new Sahara when it comes to Las Vegas’ most popular small buy-in dailies — with the 7pm event drawing consistent fields of 50 players or more.

I approached the podium and purchased a seat for the event. The buy-in is $45 for 4,500 in chips, plus a $20 add-on that gives you 4,000 more chips, which you can purchase any time within the first hour. (There’s also an option for unlimited re-entry within that time frame.)  With 20-minute levels, that add-on is necessary, especially considering there are no automatic shufflers in the tournament tables.

The rake is taken out of the initial buy-in, $7 of which goes to the dealers and poker room staff and $10 of which goes to “Uncle Stratosphere,” according to shift manager Jennifer Mrkvicka.

“All of the add-on goes to the prize pool, darlin’,” she said. “We don’t touch any of that.”

I think she calls everyone darlin’.

The starting stack was green, black, grey and pink. Blinds started at 25/50. There were 69 entrants, eight of whom got paid. My table started 7-handed, a mix of tourists and locals and no apparent pros. Top prize was $1,221. Not bad if you could hang on.

The man to my left, a local in a knit cap and scarf, would not stop talking.

“I’m only a TDA card holder,” he announced.

Me: What’s TDA?

Poker Tournament Directors Association, obviously.

Mr. TDA would go on to double me up while holding 10-3, misread his hand for a straight and double another player up, then announce “re-raise” when in fact he was making the first raise.

He had a friend across the table.

“They call you Boomer?” I asked.

“That’s my poker name,” he replied.

Just before the first break, Mrkvicka announced that there would be pizza. And it was good.

Shortly after we ate, Boomer was eliminated, which pleased a few of my table mates.

My stack rose and fell for three hours, and I could play a hand or two, despite the quickly escalating blinds. But I couldn’t find spots to build a stack, and things got desperate on the first hand after the third break. I had only 4 big blinds, and I moved in with J9. The big blind called with pocket kings, and my hand did not improve. Finished in 16th place, not far from the money, but not quite close enough, either.

Next stop in my quest to find the best place to cut my tournament teeth is the Orleans, where I hear the 7pm $125 tournament is “juicy”, drawing upwards of 300 players every Friday.

While it is true that nowhere in Vegas could you “run it twice” in a 1/2 game before Pokerati NLH/PLO came to town, now plenty of poker rooms hardly blink when two or more players get it all-in and want to reduce variance by seeing more than one river … just like they used to do it on High Stakes Poker.

So crap now the secret of the Pokerati Game’s success is out:

• Offer games people want to play, at stakes they’re comfortable playing
• Give preference to poker rooms with skillful, supportive staff (and maybe a really big sign)
• Treat low-stakes players no differently than high rollers (h/t Benny Binion)
• Suck out often to keep the nits away

That’s pretty much all it takes to host a game that attracts tourists and locals alike. And now that I can expect casinos everywhere to be spreading Pokerati-style live action, I suppose my pioneering days are over and I can go back to being just another poor-man’s Jean-Robert Bellande.

That’s the whole theme of the Aviator Casino … airplanes, airports, and pai gow. That’s why at least some non-poker people see this creation of an info station at a California poker room as less about tourney registration but not too much less because it is still “functional art”:

More about this awesome little poker room — the coolest I’ve ever seen in the area — at TheAviatorCasino.com.

Still, fancy lines aside … as something of a new guy in the attaching-blog-names-to-Nevada-tournaments racket, kinda cool to leave one’s mark at least in a small way on the fabric of licensed-and-regulated corporately overseen real-money Vegas.

Of course that’s kinda the point of bringing in an internationally renowned tourney director. Or at least it was initially. Kinda still works, but for different reasons …

First things first … Savage has guaranteed the guarantees — $350k worth. This is despite a misleading tweet just two weeks ago from @hardrockpoker saying there’d be $1 million in guaranteed prize pools. [/shaking head] It coulda just been a hyperbolic typo, but an amusingly ironic one then considering the Hard Rock’s image problems after a few overpromises that these tourneys were to help put to rest. But according to Matt himself on 2+2, he’s got the $350k locked up by contract no matter how few players show.

Beyond that … expect an extra-partytime atmosphere around typical Savage series stuff (deep structures, quality dealers, friendly intelligent floor, good internet coverage, etc.) to liven up the joint: He’s in charge of providing ultra-improved tournament action while the Hard Rock promises to provide good music and a guaranteed flow of nipple-friendly eye-candy stumbling past the poker room.

Regardless of turnout, Detox is almost certain to be the biggest, and plausibly coolest extended poker shindig at the Hard Rock ever since it opened. All that and the Pokerati game’s Las Vegas tourney debut to boot!

LOL, “boot” could turn into a funny word @DetoxPoker … where additional player-friendly perks include added-seat satellites, lotsa food, a 2+2+Media pre-party, and promised field-wide rounds of vodka shooters.

PokerRoad Radio will be at the Hard Rock broadcasting live throughout the week. Should make for quite an interestingly raucous poker confab, intended for bigger players looking to take advantage of small buy-ins to remember what fun, no-worries poker is all about … and lower-stakes players + Allen Kessler who see good value in taking them on in a uniquely challenging hard-rocking show.

They’ve got a full slate this weekend — beyond just the free food, splashed pots, a 20k guarantee Friday tourney and stuff like that … they’ve got a whole slate of events, including a Sharon Osborne celebrity charity event (Trash Talk Championship of the World they are calling it), a party for the launch of Victory poker. Currently filming (for ESPN 360, I believe, is a $100/$200 NLH cash game. $50k buy-in … with Antonio Esfandiari, Andrew Robl and others on the table … we’ll have some more names for you. And I think that’s The Maven waiting in the wings for a seat.

Click here for a rundown of all they’ve got going on.

Of course the game next table over is what really interests me — $1/$2 NLH/PLO … just an option to run-it-2x today, not automatic. But in my jaded opinion, that’s where the real poker is going on. The plan is to keep this game running throughout the weekend — as Super Bowl raffle is currently my 2010 bankroll plan.

More TK throughout the weekend … but here’s a glimpse of surprisingly early Friday night action taking off at the Hard Rock’s big poker weekend:

They also had a specialty non-bracelet tourney today — a $125 buy-in with 60something players (Warren Karp was the “known” name who made the final table) — and I happened to stumble upon the semi-funny sitch captured above … where at a table full of floormen, someone called floor. Ha ha.

Though you can imagine the pressure on the floorguy should he make the wrong ruling, it frankly wasn’t that hard of a decision … But there were a lot of people interested in how it would turn out, particularly because these players, while being trained in TDA rules, where in a tourney being run by WSOP staff, which has its own rules, which are slightly different from the TDA’s.

Click below for a breakdown of the situation, and see for yourself if you woulda made the same decision.

Blinds are 200/400. A player in middle to late position announces raise and makes it 1,200 to go as the dealer reiterates, “Raise.”

The small blind, however, didn’t hear it. And he tossed in his 200 intending to call. Upon learning there was a raise, the SB tried to take his 200 chips and muck his hand. That’s when someone protested, and eventually the SB called floor.

The floor gave the player two options: He could either abandon his hand and the extra 200 he threw into the pot (400 total), or call the 1,200. It would not be legal, however, for him to muck his hand and retrieve the chips he errantly put in the pot not realizing there had been a raise. The percentage of the undercall in relation to the raise made no difference.

According to WSOP rules, the only time a player can pull chips out of the pot is if he makes a call (or a raise?) out of turn, and the player in front of him raises. At that point he can pull back his chips and throw away the hand (or call, or raise).

From our sources at the Hard Rock, the ever-important details about Paris Hilton’s poker action:

She did the tournament Friday night at 11 p.m. as part of her weekend-long birthday celebration. She was with about 20 friends and had a special section reserved for her, however, the room was not closed and other players cycled in on her table. There was about 50 people in the un-advertised tournament. A DJ was brought in for her and the room had a great party atmosphere and vibe that evening. The buy-in was $100 and she was knocked out in about 45 minutes.

They also have 1/2 NLH there now. Apparently they’ve had it for a few months … News to me, though. I still thought their smallest game was a raucous 2/5 populated with monster stacks. Silly me.

The place that was poker before poker was cool has opened a new room. Binion’s has opened a 10-table room that advertises a max rake of $3 on all games, a comp rate of $2-per-hour, tableside food service, and special room rates for players. The room is located near the front of the casino on the old Mint (west) side.

Anyhow, that’s the half-story I know about this company that seems to be on the forefront of deeply vested in gambling technology. (One of their other products I just saw at Caesar’s last week was a cardless table-blackjack game featuring a video image of a dealer.)

But now ShuffleTech is in the picture, too — not dealing to casinos, but to home users. While I want to say, “Awesome!” … I gotta say, looking at their shufflers makes me think of the first laptops, when they were the size of suitcases. But still, as archaic as their version (which somehow steers clear of patent protections) seems, I can’t see how these won’t become more and more standard in the future … and once we get some robots that can actually pitch the cards … watch out dealers:

(But for now, could you imagine being deep in the tank when the next deck is being set rumble rumble?)

Look on your right, scroll down (or up depending on when you’re seeing this post), and let your voice be heard. And heard again. The Venetian seems to have the gold medal locked up, but there’s still quite a race for bronze.

NOTE: This poll is only open to the one percent of readers who do more than actually read this site — the ones that leave comments, vote, hack, flame, etc. Elitism has its privileges.