Poker Quads Over Quads
With 7 cards to choose from in hold'em, your hole cards and the board, the odds of making quads is about 1 in 595. (13. (48 choose 3)) / (52 choose 7) which = 0.7 or 1 in 595. This is over the entire 7 cards. So for another person to have quads in the same hand we figure out how many possible hands are left. Which makes Quick Quads more interesting and challenging. Most video poker games require five coins per line to get maximum value. Quick Quads requires six coins per line. The 'gimmick' that makes paying the extra coin worthwhile is that you receive a whole lot more 4-of-a-kinds (in video poker shorthand, these are known as 'quads'). I'll have you know I graduated top of my class at Upswing Poker, and I've been involved in numerous secret home games, and I have busted opponents over 300 times. I am trained in piosolver and I'm the top player in the entire Northeast US live 5-10 scene.
A casino in Arizona last week was home to one of the worst bad beats you’ll ever see.
At the Casino Del Sol Poker Room in Tuscon, a run-of-the-mill $1-$2 table saw some crazy fireworks with a $18,000 bad beat jackpot up for grabs. When the dust settled, one player was sitting with a straight flush, which trounced a player with quad nines and a player with quad tens, as pictured above. The photo was posted to Reddit’s poker forum.
The player with the king-high straight flush received $4,500 of the bad beat, while the player with quad tens received the lion’s share of $9,000. The player who had flopped quad nines received just $665, the same as every other player at the table uninvolved with the hand.
The payout structure is typical of bad beat jackpots, but it’s virtually unheard of for there to be three qualifying hands in a bad beat. Under bad beat jackpot rules in poker rooms across the country, you must play both of your hole cards. The absurdity of the hand apparently had the poker room a little confused. It took about 90 minutes for the payouts to occur.
The man who suffered the bad beat on the bad beat was 37-year-old recreational poker player R.J. Bergman, reported PokerNews. Bergman, a YMCA program director, lost his $165 stack in the hand, so he really only won $500 for losing with quad nines.
Bergman wasn’t happy with the result. The 10 that landed on the river was a cruel card because the player with pocket tens wasn’t live to win the hand.
“I explained [to the casino] that the 10s were drawing dead on the turn so how is it a bad beat for him,” he wrote on Reddit. “They said it goes by the rank of the cards after the hand is done.”
However, argued Bergman, “the single card that improves his hand over mine is the case 10 and that gives the other guy the straight flush. He had 0 percent to win the hand after the turn card came out. I was a 98 percent favorite.”
What has Bergman learned from the hand?
“Never slow play flopped quads!” he wrote tongue-in-cheek. “I wake up every morning shaking my head. My friends are saying I should start a Gofundme page to cover the therapy bills I am going to need. Any supporters in that?”
Poker Quads Over Quads Free
Bergman added that the hand makes him feel “queasy.”
Introduction
'Bad beat' is a term that can mean having an outstanding chance of winning a bet, only to still lose. The term can be used in any form of gambling but is most commonly applied to poker. Many poker rooms offer a progressive jackpot for very unlikely bad beats. Various other rules are added to ensure that only surprising bad beats win. Below I present tables of bad beat probabilities, starting with the most liberal rules, and ending with the most stringent. The most stringent rules, the 'Bad Beat Type 3', are the most common, in my experience.
Following are the rules for a type 1 bad beat.
- Both the bad beat and winning hand must be the best possible combination of five cards. In cases where the same hand can be created multiple ways (for example player has AK and the board shows AAKKQ) the player's hole cards will take priority.
- Both the bad beat and winning hand must make use of both hole cards.
- A full house must be beaten by a four of a kind or higher.
The rules for a type 2 bad beat are the same as type 1, plus any four of a kind, whether the bad beat hand or winning hand, must contain a pocket pair.
The rules for a type 3 bad beat are the same as type 2, plus a full house may not make use of a three of a kind entirely on the board.
In my experience, is the most common format for bad beat rules is type 3. The additional rule for type 3 makes very little difference, compared to type 2.
The following table shows the probability of each bad beat hand under all three types of rules. The table is based on a ten-player game in which nobody ever folds. The probabilities are for any pair of players meeting the qualifying rules. If you want to know YOUR probability of winning, you should divide the probability in the table by 10.
Bad Beat Probabilities
| Bad Beat Hand | Type 1 | Type 2 | Type 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Any full house | 0.00203329 | 0.00050305 | 0.00049508 |
| Full house, three 3's or higher | 0.00189512 | 0.00046978 | 0.00046204 |
| Full house, three 4's or higher | 0.00175159 | 0.00043444 | 0.00042728 |
| Full house, three 5's or higher | 0.00160333 | 0.00039706 | 0.00039028 |
| Full house, three 6's or higher | 0.00144965 | 0.00035741 | 0.00035145 |
| Full house, three 7's or higher | 0.0012936 | 0.00031767 | 0.00031266 |
| Full house, three 8's or higher | 0.00113492 | 0.00027775 | 0.00027355 |
| Full house, three 9's or higher | 0.00097379 | 0.00023772 | 0.00023445 |
| Full house, three T's or higher | 0.00081113 | 0.00019759 | 0.00019503 |
| Full house, three J's or higher | 0.00064763 | 0.00015708 | 0.00015509 |
| Full house, three Q's or higher | 0.00048533 | 0.00011838 | 0.00011682 |
| Full house, three K's or higher | 0.00032561 | 0.00008130 | 0.00008033 |
| Full house, three A's or higher | 0.00016964 | 0.00004608 | 0.00004579 |
| Full house, aces full of 3's or higher | 0.00016004 | 0.00004350 | 0.00004322 |
| Full house, aces full of 4's or higher | 0.00014986 | 0.00004080 | 0.00004052 |
| Full house, aces full of 5's or higher | 0.00013898 | 0.00003797 | 0.00003763 |
| Full house, aces full of 6's or higher | 0.00012749 | 0.00003504 | 0.00003469 |
| Full house, aces full of 7's or higher | 0.00011580 | 0.00003233 | 0.00003203 |
| Full house, aces full of 8's or higher | 0.00010347 | 0.00002957 | 0.00002925 |
| Full house, aces full of 9's or higher | 0.00009067 | 0.00002673 | 0.00002645 |
| Full house, aces full of T's or higher | 0.00007714 | 0.00002383 | 0.00002359 |
| Full house, aces full of J's or higher | 0.00006286 | 0.00002064 | 0.0000204 |
| Full house, aces full of Q's or higher | 0.00004793 | 0.00001738 | 0.00001721 |
| Full house, aces full of K's or higher | 0.00003230 | 0.00001408 | 0.00001402 |
| Any four of a kind | 0.00001601 | 0.00001086 | 0.00001081 |
| Four 3's or higher | 0.00001437 | 0.00000996 | 0.00000992 |
| Four 4's or higher | 0.0000127 | 0.00000900 | 0.00000902 |
| Four 5's or higher | 0.00001099 | 0.00000805 | 0.00000804 |
| Four 6's or higher | 0.00000934 | 0.00000705 | 0.00000707 |
| Four 7's or higher | 0.0000078 | 0.00000613 | 0.00000611 |
| Four 8's or higher | 0.0000064 | 0.00000525 | 0.00000519 |
| Four 9's or higher | 0.00000519 | 0.00000439 | 0.00000435 |
| Four T's or higher | 0.00000414 | 0.00000359 | 0.00000357 |
| Four J's or higher | 0.00000317 | 0.00000287 | 0.00000285 |
| Four Q's or higher | 0.00000246 | 0.00000226 | 0.00000224 |
| Four K's or higher | 0.00000193 | 0.00000180 | 0.00000179 |
| Four A's or higher | 0.00000157 | 0.00000149 | 0.00000147 |
| Any straight flush | 0.0000012 | 0.00000122 | 0.00000121 |
| Straight flush 6 high or higher | 0.00000105 | 0.00000107 | 0.00000105 |
| Straight flush 7 high or higher | 0.00000089 | 0.00000091 | 0.00000090 |
| Straight flush 8 high or higher | 0.00000073 | 0.00000074 | 0.00000074 |
| Straight flush 9 high or higher | 0.00000056 | 0.00000059 | 0.00000058 |
| Straight flush T high or higher | 0.00000041 | 0.00000043 | 0.00000042 |
| Straight flush J high or higher | 0.00000028 | 0.00000027 | 0.00000027 |
| Straight flush Q high or higher | 0.00000012 | 0.00000012 | 0.00000012 |
Methodology
Poker Quads Over Quads
The above tables are the result of random simulations of about 2.5 billion rounds each.
Poker Quads Over Quads For Sale
Further Reading
The video poker variant World Series of Poker - Final Table Bonus features a bad beat jackpot. See my section on that game for more information.
Brian Alspach has a very good page on Texas Hold'em, including a section on the Bad Beat Jackpot at Party Poker.
Written by: Michael Shackleford