All Caesars poker rooms across Nevada launched the Mega Beat Progressive Poker Jackpot earlier this month. It started with $200k to be paid out if some luckbox got his quad aces cracked. For every $100k more dumped into the drop, the qualifying hand also drops. So at $300k, all you need to lose with is with quad kings, at $400k quad queens …

I tried to hit it last week — flopped quad bullets at Planet Hollywood with two fish betting into me — but couldn’t lose to win.

After I relayed the story to a math-minded pro friend who told me that, because of the board, there was no possible hand that could have beat me and I should have raised at some point prior to the river.

Meanwhile, Yahoo Answers told me the odds of losing with a hand as weak as quad eights (see: $800k on the Mega Beat scale) are “not good.”

But for this new Caesars Megabeat Jackpot, it doesn’t have to be you: 20 percent of the jackpot goes to the player with the losing hand, and 10 percent to the player with the winning hand; But 70 percent is distributed to players at all Caesars properties in the state. Because of this promo, they’re not offering high hand bonuses. Which means I was a few days late for being good enough to actually win with quads. Is that a bad beat?

Goodbye Rakeback
For most of last year, poker players in Las Vegas could find at least one place to earn something of an hourly wage on top of the chips they collected at the table. But that trend has all but vanished in 2013. Poker rooms have essentially stopped encouraging grinders to fold all day long.

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If you didn’t arrive by 8:30am, you didn’t get a seat. (The room wasn’t even supposed to open until 10.)

On its last day, the Tropicana would give away nearly $16,000, and draw its biggest single-day crowd

The last day at the new Tropicana Poker Room, this past Tuesday, may have been their busiest ever, as they gave away nearly $16,000 in leftover jackpot cash before closing down to make room for more slot machines.

Every seat in the 6-table room was filled until the last drawing at 4 p.m.–  with a wait-list at one point nearly 100-long before those realizing they would never get a seat disbursed.

Nevada law stipulates that any jackpot drop must go back to the players, so twice every hour, there were drawings for $1,111 in cash, and in the final hour, the money was juiced up a bit more to fully empty the coffers. I had a deal to split the money with fellow Pokeratier Andrew, if one of us hit, but our numbers were never called. One guy won 3 times, and didn’t share with anybody but his wife.

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