Poker Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Casino Poker:
Casino Texas Hold'em Poker: How I Lost a Winning Bad Beat Jackpot. Many casinos encourage play in their poker rooms by offering a “Bad Beat Jackpot.” Usually a dollar is raked from each pot and with time builds towards a large jackpot. The Bad Beat Jackpot is awarded when an even higher ranked hand beats a high-ranking poker hand. While the rules to a Bad Beat Jackpot vary widely from casino to casino, the general concept is the same. When a highly ranked texas hold'em poker hand gets beat, a jackpot is awarded. Commonly, it takes Aces Full over Tens beaten to qualify for a Bad Beat Jackpot. Some casinos or cardrooms play any Four of a Kind beaten, other cardrooms require Four Tens or higher to be beaten. Because these high hands are rare, losing with these hands becomes an extremely rare event. Jackpots build for months before anyone wins. Often jackpots range from $5,000 to $80,000.
The payoff schedule for the winners
The payoff schedule for the winners of the Bad Beat Jackpots also varies by casino or cardroom. A common pay out scheme is that 50% of the jackpot goes to the bad beat player (e.g., the player with Four Tens beaten by Four Kings). The player winning the pot (the player with Four Kings causing the bad beat) gets 25% of the Jackpot. The remaining 25% of the Jackpot is then divided among the remaining players at the table. Therefore, if the bad beat Jackpot is $30,000 and there are 8 players at the table, each player not involved in the bad beat (6 players) would receive 1/6 of 25% of the $30,000 jackpot or a payoff of $1,250. Not a bad payoff for just sitting at the online hold'em poker table.