Author: horse-racing-free-tips

For a game where most players rarely consider luck, there are lots of superstitions in poker. When you mention that someone was lucky in that poker tournament they won, be careful of how you say it. For instance, if you mention that you were unlucky, your luck may never change.

Ok, that may sound a bit ubsurd, but poker is a game loaded with superstitions. Did you know that if you are playing a game with two seperate decks and you are asked to pick the deck, you should always pick the deck of cards that is furthest from you? Or, how about If you get a run of bad cards, you must sit on a hankerchief to break your bad luck? It’s actually considered good luck to blow through a deck of cards while they are being shuffled.

Some other fascinating poker superstitions are:

• You can change the run of cards by walking around your chair three times.
• The luckiest seat at the poker table faces the door.
• The unluckiest seat has it’s back to a fireplace.
• When changing seats, you should always do so clockwise.
• The unluckiest poker card is the four of clubs.
• It’s very unlucky to sit with your legs crossed at the poker table.
• Friday is a bad day for playing cards.
• The 13th is also a bad day, regardless of what day of the week it is.

For being such a game full of skill, many people still hold on to the old superstitions.

If you aren’t familiar with bad beat jackpots, let me explain. In most brick and mortar casinos there is a progressive jackpot that builds over time, called the bad beat jackpot. Poker rooms usually take out a dollar or two out of every raked pot and put it into? the bad beat jackpot.

The rules for hitting the jackpot are different in each casino. At some casinos you only need Aces full of Jacks or better beaten, while some casinos offer even harder beats such as a four of a kind beaten. In most card rooms, you must also be playing at a limit table. No limit games generally don’t qualify, as the jackpot would be hit much more frequently with players constantly all in and seeing every card the board has to offer. When a bad beat happens and is verified, everyone gets paid.

The structure for a bad beat jackpot payout also varies from casino to casino. It is common to see the losing hand receive 40% of the jackpot, the winning hand receive 25% of the jackpot, the rest of the table split 15% of the jackpot, and the rest of the poker room split the remaining 20%. As you can see, when someone hits a jackpot, there is plenty of room for everyone to celebrate.

In the last four years I’ve played countless hours of poker in casinos in Missouri, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oklahoma and had never experienced a bad beat jackpot until last night.

I headed up to Cherokee Casino, in West Siloam Springs, Oklahoma, with a buddy of mine, to get a few hours of play in. While waiting for our seats to open, we sat down in fairly loose $4/$8 limit game. In this poker room, $4/$8 limit is the lowest limit game offered, so it feels much like playing $2/$4 and $3/$6, where having 7 callers pre-flop on a raised hand is common and where Aces hardly stand a chance.

We had only been playing for about 30 minutes when it all went down. I was sitting in seat 9, with a loose player sitting to my right, in seat 8. This player was 23 years old and was also a dealer at the casino. (In the larger casinos, usually if you are a dealer you are not allowed to play in games in your own card room, but this isn’t a rule at Cherokee Casino.)

The player in seat 8 was holding JJ and the player in seat 5 was holding QQ. The majority of this hand was heads up and the final board was:

J J Q Q 4

Both players were trying to slow play their hands so the betting didn’t get very high until the river, where the player with JJ 3 betted the pot and was all-in for his last few dollars. Our table was only half paying attention because this pot didn’t seem very exciting.

The player in seat 8, holding the JJ, turned up his jacks to show his quads and said, “Can you beat this!” with a smirk on his face. The table woke up a little because a player was showing four Jacks. The player in seat 5 smiled big and said, “Sure can!” and turned over his quad Queens.

Only about three players at the table really knew what this meant; it was bad beat jackpot time. After about a few seconds of explaining the situation, everyone at the table, except for the two first time players, knew what was happening and the table erupted in cheers.

Players from around the poker room were surrounding our table trying to see what had happened. After all, usually players don’t start cheering and jumping around at a $4/$8 limit table.

The bad beat jackpot was up to a little over $80,000. After about an hour of camera checking, card checking, paper work, and verification, the bad beat was confirmed with 4 Jacks losing to 4 Queens. The player next to me, with the 4 Jacks, won $32,000. The player across from me, with the 4 Queens, won $20,000. The other 7 players, including my friend and me, split $12,000, which ended up being about $1720 apiece. The rest of the poker room players ended up getting around $130 a head.

The two first-time players at our table had no idea what was going on and why they were being handed $1700 in cash. We made sure to tell them poker wasn’t always this easy. After playing for a few more hours and never leaving our $4/$8 seats, it was time to head home. Not a bad night, at the $4/$8 tables.

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Badugi, is the Asian variant of poker that has been gaining significant popularity among the card playing enthusiasts in the past few years. Badugi is usually reported to have come from Korea but there are also accounts of its Chinese origin. It is offered in many poker online sites as well as in big casinos. With its present status, there is no doubt that Badugi has ‘arrived” in the gambling scene. In Badugi, a hand is made up of four cards, where a player has three chances to draw or change the combination, to attain the lowest hand possible and win the pot.

A badugi is a hand made up of a combination four of cards of different suits and values. Since Badugi is a lowball game, the best badugi is the combination of the ace of club (AC), 2hearts(2H), 3spade(3S) and 4diamond(4D). The ace has a low value in Badugi and again, the lower the hand score, the better. To cite an example: AC 8D 3H 6S wins over 2C 9D 4H 7S, another badugi.

A player is not always lucky to have a badugi and there are other hand combinations like the:
1. 3-card hand where two cards either have the same value or the same suit. If a hand consist of the cards AS AD 5H 3C, there are only three active cards, AS, 5H & 3C because the two aces shall be counted as one card. Another combination may have two cards of the same suit like 2H and 5H in AS 2D5H 2H. In this case, the one with a higher value, 5H, shall be out and the three-card hand shall be AS 2H 2D.

A badugi wins over a three-card hand.

2. 2-card hand where there are three cards of the same suit or value. For example, the hand consisting of the cards AABB shall become AB while another hand with 5S2F4F5F shall become 5S2F. A three-card hand wins over a two-card hand.

3. 1- card hand which happens if a player is dealt with four cards that are one of a kind, that is, they are of the same suit or the same value. A combination like 5S5D5F5G shall be reduced to a one-card hand only.

A combination with two or more cards of the same value is also called a paired hand while that with two or more cards belonging to the same suit is called a suited hand.

Betting in Badugi.

Betting depends on whether you are playing the limit, pot limit, half-pot limit badugi. Yes, in Badugi a player must always aim for the lowest badugi but remember that a Badugi can be won even without a badugi.