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.

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1. Netherlands I-Gaming Attitudes - Probably the most interesting international story of the past week is the ruminations from the Netherlands that the new government may be interested in liberalizing the country’s Internet gambling laws. It’s not clear how far this process would go and what games or betting would be included, but a lot could happen in what has been a very restricted online market in the EU thus far. [eGaming Review]

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2. Nova Scotia Says No (That’s in Canada, Folks) - Another international piece is the recent pronouncement of the premier of Nova Scotia that that province will not pursue a government-sanctioned Internet gaming offering. Nova Scotia’s finance minister added that any estimate of the revenues associated with Internet gaming would be “a wild guess.”(That’s an interesting comment given that the province of Ontario has publicly estimated that it could turn a profit of at least C$100 million/year; many have questioned the basis for such a projection.) The CEO of the Nova Scotia Gaming Corp. (rightly) pointed out recently that Internet gambling will continue to grow whether the government is involved or not. [Globe and Mail]

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3. Betfair Move - Hot on the heels of the Betfair IPO announcement, there is speculation that Betfair may move out of the UK to a jurisdiction with a lower tax rate. William Hill and Ladbrokes recently moved to Gibraltar because they perceived that UK taxes were too high. Some are saying Betfair may make a similar play. With competition increasing among Internet gaming jurisdictions, more and more operators are paying attention to applicable taxes. [CasinoGamblingWeb]
   

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4. Station Casinos Trademark Infringement/Cybersquatting Suit - Station Casinos Inc. has sued two website operators in Federal Court in Nevada: SL Enterprises (www.vegasstationcasino.com) and Ryan Murphy (www.stationcasinos.org). If the Station marks have sufficient rights attached to them through use and/or registration, they should have a good case. This kind of thing happens in i-gaming all the time and it’s a big problem for operators; it’s tremendously time-consuming and potentially expensive to vigilantly prosecute misappropriation of property rights. [Las Vegas Sun]
   

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5. PartyGaming in Venezuela - PartyGaming plc has set up an online poker offering in Venezuela. This continues two trends: Party’s continuing march around the world into new markets and the increased interest in South America as a lucrative and growing market for interactive gaming. [Gambling Zion]

– everyone’s abuzz about Rush Poker. Full Tilt seems to have come up with a catch-on concept that makes no bones about feeding the addiction in a way that seemingly takes multitabling to a whole new dimension. But will Hevad Khan ever be able to play?

– the new WSOP hygeine rule. Yuck. But does it affect strategy?

– and the Heartland Poker Tour flies in to town to pit Vegas locals against “heartland” tourists, bringing more action to Red Rock than Station Casinos coulda anticipated. My personal poker dreams re-crushed.

The Poker Beat
1/21/10

Click here to weigh in on show topics on the Poker Road Forums.

NOTE: I plea the 5th against allegations that I may have been podcasting while intoxicated.

Jay Busbee (from Bluff) has a good State of the Poker Union address on ESPN.com, where he officially declares the poker boom dead. Also interesting to see ESPN, for the first time I remember in a long-long while, running (non-affiliate) PokerStars ads. [ESPN.com]

Poker Shrink Cranky Olde Coot has a good post wondering why FIDPA still hasn’t made the “new rules” they’ve long ballyhooed public. [PokerBlog.com]

Full Disclosure: FIDPA is one of my MySpace friends. [MySpace.com]

Liberal columnist Michael Kinsley shares a story about John McCain going on some extremely unpresidential tilt at the craps table. (The TJ Cloutier of Politics? Tons of success, a sometimes dangerous love of craps, and never quite able to win the Big One?) [The Daily Beast, via Huffington Post, via Short-Stacked Shamus]

Beyond the Table has a new home online. [Podcast.com]

I think Dr. Pauly’s starting to get a little miffed at me for not working out some production kinks and posting our re-constituted incarnation of Tao of Pokerati, but I think I can make him feel better by simply reading his blog. [Tao of Poker]

With all the talk of what really goes into a world-record endurance poker session, I forgot to send y’all to live-forum coverage of The Poker Den 3 — PartyPoker’s 36-hour high-stakes televised cash game. [MatchroomPoker.com]

Dutch Boyd apparently bought Steve Hall’s Pokerfolio in a semi-hostile takeover. Poor Steve … but he has found a new home for his poker updates/pictures of attractive Asian female dealers. [Pokerfolio.Spruz.com]

Also, the X-10 electronic table — a knock-off of the PokerTek PokerPro popping up in so many places — sharing the same name as a hidden camera used by so many pervy peeping toms before a few lawsuits encouraged them to re-market themselves as a security device. [SlipperyBrick.com]

And long overdue, here’s a great tale of a totally degenerate poker blogger/gambler rescuing his bankroll by poetically chasing/hitting the Station Casinos bad-beat jackpot. [TheTrooper97, via Up for Poker]

There’s more, too, coagulating in my bookmarks and inbox. News stories, forum threads, tourney results … Who knows … maybe I’ll get to them for your reading pleasure, but as is always the case from Head Slacker at this Little-Ole Poker Blog, no promises. It’s good to be back with you all.

LATE ADDITIONS:

Lacey Jones is getting ready for her co-hosting duties of Real Deal, the pokery interactive musical at The Venetian, which kicks off next week. [PokerListings.com via LasVegasAdvisor.com]

She also hosted an interesting event at Cathouse (as simply Lacey J) where women showed up for a seductive-attire contest where the winner got a boob job. [Photobucket.com]

Meanwhile, there was a hardcore SWAT-team poker raid in Fayetteville, NC. A firsthand account as well as some non-poker media coverage here and here. [Triangle Poker Journal]

In other Vegassy business partnership deals, for the sake of comparison, my fellow newbie Las Vegas local Michael Jackson just did a deal with Thomas Barrack of Colony Capital, which owns the Las Vegas Hilton and Station Casinos. It really was sorta one-sided … but quite a show of good-faith when a neighbor pays off your $23.5 million debt on Neverland Ranch.