Gossip Column: Canada’s Playground Poker Club Shatters World Record With a CAD 2.60 Million Bad Beat Jackpot

In a stunning turn of events at the Playground Poker Club in Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada, the record for the largest bad beat jackpot in poker history was shattered when a staggering CAD 2,590,185 (~ US$1.94 Million) jackpot got triggered on Wednesday evening. This momentous event unfolded at a low-stakes table, with all poker players sharing in the windfall.

While the players’ identities at the heart of this jackpot remain confidential, we have insight into how the landmark hand unfolded. On a board of , one player must have been brimming with anticipation as they held – a four-of-a-kind, which, although not the stone-cold nuts, ensured that the bad beat jackpot would be activated if he were beaten. As luck would have it, this player’s quad tens were trumped by an opponent’s straight flush, revealed as , triggering the largest bad beat jackpot in live poker history.

Here’s how the monumental jackpot payout was divided:

• The losing hand, with the four-of-a-kind 10s, walked away with 40% of the Bad Beat Jackpot worth $776,166
• The winning hand, the straight flush, pocketed 20% of the pot worth $388,083
• Another 20% of the jackpot was distributed equally among the remaining players at the table where the record-setting hand occurred.
• The final 20% was shared among all the other cash game Hold’em players who were signed in and playing elsewhere in the venue at the time of the epic hand.

This equated to an impressive payout of about $776,166 for the losing hand, $388,083 for the winning hand, and $388,083 split among the other players at the table and throughout the room (all in USD).

The reseeded jackpot now stands at $700,000, awaiting the next lucky players.

Interestingly, the Playground Poker Club was also the stage for the previous record-setting bad beat jackpot, which saw a similarly spectacular hand in June 2022 when the same quad tens were beaten by a straight flush, resulting in a US$2.2 Million jackpot.

Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh also joined the record books later that summer when a $1.2 Million jackpot was triggered as a royal flush trumped quad aces, dealt to local player Raymond Broderson.