Bad Beat Jackpot Profitability, 9max and 6max

Bad Beat Jackpot Profitability, 9max and 6max

I have been playing the online BBJ tables at Carbon Poker.

It is awarded when a player has quad 7s cracked. (both players using both cards)
There is no mention of pocket pairs being required so I think KT vs QQ on a TTTQQ board is ok.


From your table I get the odds of a Bad Beat taking place as:
0.0000078 or 1 in 128205

However Carbon has 9max tables, so how does this effect the odds?
What about for 6max tables?

Also at what level of jackpot will it become profitable to play the tables based solely on the maths of winning your share of the jackpot noting that:
They rake 50cents from each pot for the jackpot, and that
10% of the jackpot is raked, and 20% is used to reseed, so only 70% will go to the 9 players at the table.

Am I correct at working out break even at:
50 cents x 128205 x (9 way split) / .70 (paid out) = $824,000 required jackpot level (ignoring the fact its a 9max table)

[edit]
Noting that there are 45 player combinations on a 10max table but only 36 on a 9 max table, the jackpot should on off 1 time in 160256 instead.

And looking at this again I have not counted for the fact I play the 50cents one hand in 9, therefore break even should be:
50 cents /9 x 160256 x 9 / .7 = $114,000

So on average if a play 160,256 hands I will contribute $8,903 to the jackpot (2.8BB/100 playing 100NL)
At the moment the jackpot is at $280,000, which paid out as:
$98,000 to the loser, $49,000 to the winner, $7,000 to each of the other players
EV: + $12,874 per 160256 hands or 8cents per hand or 4BB/100 playing 100NL

If you play 12 tables, 8 hours per day, assuming 70 hands/hour, you should have a BBJ be hit once every 23.8 days.

Ignoring the fact "it's probably going to go off when I'm a sleep" I'd be interested in any other comments.
Thanks

I looked at this before, and doing some pretty rough maths, came to the conclusion that the extra rake will kill you quicker than you could win the jackpot. The pot would have to be massive for it to even become worth the effort. Then with the massive variance associated with this kind of payout there is never any guarantee of you ever being lucky enough to hit it. Imagine finding a pot big enough, playing 100,000 hands and someone else hitting it on another table, or while you were asleep?

My advice is to find a regular game, with low rake, sign up for rake back deals and perfect your game, the BBJ is just another way of the card room getting your money.

Without bothering to hack through the math of the basic question--I regard "quads beaten" jackpots to be 43 squillion to one against hitting, and "quad Xs or better beaten" jackpots to be 43 squillion squillion to one--the 6 players max jackpot game is even more hopeless than the 9 player game. There are 36 player vs. player possible matchups in a 9-handed game, but only 15 in a 6-handed game. So the 6-handed game will hit less than half as often--but I bet they take the same jackpot rake!

"Worth the effort" is something of a problem as many poker rooms now have the bad beat, so it's impossible to avoid.

There is no option to not participate. $1 from every pot of $20 or more is raked for the bad beat - although some casinos DO require a minimum number of players being dealt in. Typically, if the table is short-handed enough to have a reduced rake, it also does not rate for the BBJ.

I'm not a big fan of them because, as was said, the EV just isn't there. Plus, it CAN change the way the game is played.

Personally, I much more prefer a High Hand jackpot. Mohegan Sun CT does this. For three hours, $1 is collected from pots of $20, and high hands are recorded. During the fourth hour, the money is collected, counted and awarded.

So every four hours, SOMEBODY wins, around $1,300. Compared to the months that may go for the Bad Beat, I'll take the High Hand any day!

Plus, the high hand does NOT have to use both hole cards, nor does there even need to be a showdown. So the basic game is unaffected.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

"Worth the effort" is something of a problem as many poker rooms now have the bad beat, so it's impossible to avoid.

There is no option to not participate. $1 from every pot of $20 or more is raked for the bad beat - although some casinos DO require a minimum number of players being dealt in. Typically, if the table is short-handed enough to have a reduced rake, it also does not rate for the BBJ.

I'm not a big fan of them because, as was said, the EV just isn't there. Plus, it CAN change the way the game is played.

Personally, I much more prefer a High Hand jackpot. Mohegan Sun CT does this. For three hours, $1 is collected from pots of $20, and high hands are recorded. During the fourth hour, the money is collected, counted and awarded.

So every four hours, SOMEBODY wins, around $1,300. Compared to the months that may go for the Bad Beat, I'll take the High Hand any day!

Plus, the high hand does NOT have to use both hole cards, nor does there even need to be a showdown. So the basic game is unaffected.

I floated the idea once to the manager of the cardroom where I used to play that a player could declare himself "jackpot ineligible" (signified by a marker similar to the kill button or something like that), and if he won the pot, the jackpot dollar that would have been dropped would be given to him. The manager didn't like it because he thought it would be more work for the dealers (they'd have to set the dollar aside, then drop it later, rather than just dropping it from the get-go), and he also had some questions about the legality of not dropping the dollar immediately. This, of course, was tommyrot. The real reason he--and other cardroom managers--wouldn't like to allow players to do that is that it would reduce the amount of the jackpot by X dollars--and the SUPER BIG COLOSSAL JACKPOT is what sucks in the doofi and keeps their butts in the chairs--even if you have to get a J-high straight flush beaten on a cloudy Tuesday, dealt by a left-handed albino dealer, to win it.

MKL -

That answer is BS since, in most cardrooms, the BB chip is kept next to the rake chips. Both are left on the table so the cameras can see them, and then dropped after the pot is pushed.

But there is a more logical reason for denying such an opt-out. The Bad Beat requires two players with qualifying hands. What happens if one of those qualifyiers was an opt-out player? Does that mean the opt-out hand does not qualify? If so, the entire table will want to kill the opt-out player. If it means that the opt-out hand simply doesn't get his share, then it screws up the math.

For what it's worth, I can see an opt-out working in a High Hand room, since the only qualifyier to the High Hand is the hand itself, and the minimum $20 pot.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

MKL -

That answer is BS since, in most cardrooms, the BB chip is kept next to the rake chips. Both are left on the table so the cameras can see them, and then dropped after the pot is pushed.

But there is a more logical reason for denying such an opt-out. The Bad Beat requires two players with qualifying hands. What happens if one of those qualifyiers was an opt-out player? Does that mean the opt-out hand does not qualify? If so, the entire table will want to kill the opt-out player. If it means that the opt-out hand simply doesn't get his share, then it screws up the math.

For what it's worth, I can see an opt-out working in a High Hand room, since the only qualifyier to the High Hand is the hand itself, and the minimum $20 pot.

Actually, in every Vegas room I played in last month that had any kind of jackpot, the JP dollar was slurped into its slot (it was the small blind) as soon as the cards were dealt. This would be about ten different casinos. California cardrooms also drop that dollar right away (as well as the rake, if there's a flop).

I don't really see any conflict such as you describe. The house would simply not pay the opt-out player the amount he would have otherwise gotten (whether winner, loser, or "spectator" money), but would pay everyone else their share. After all, there would be no justification for denying the other players that money, since they had allowed the house to take their jackpot dollars. The amount not paid out to the opt-out player could simply be returned to the backup jackpot pool.

The only danger I could see is that the loser would have no incentive to show his hand--but I would imagine anyone losing with a monster wouldn't be able to resist.