+135 @ The Commerce Casino

There are two ways of looking at the day. The first is to focus on my performance which included misplaying an A,J in late position by not raising, losing a pot to a fellow who went all in and made his straight on the river (but my Aces up did win the side pot), and raising K,Q suited and having the flop miss me. My starting cards weren't great (in two hours of play I didn't have a single pocket pair) and none of the ones I played translated into very much. After reading this you may be wondering how I made $135. That gets into the other way of looking at the day. I made $172 by being at the table when there was a jackpot.

A jackpot (sometimes called a "bad-beat jackpot") is given out when a really good hand loses to a better hand. At the Commerce Club this translates to Aces full or better losing to four of a kind or better. Depending on the club or the particular kind of jackpot the losing hand might have to be Aces full of tens. The house pays for the jackpot by taking a fixed amount of money from every pot. At a $3-$6 table it is $1 per round. That's in addition to the $3 rake that the house keeps.

I don't remember what my cards were, but I was out of the hand before the flop. The dealer gasped when it came out A,A,A. There were a couple small bets and by the 5 on the turn there were only two guys left. They chatted a little bit about not betting (evidently you can say the wrong thing, like describing your exact cards, and the jackpot is nullified), and so they both checked the 6 on the river. One guy turns over a pair of 8s, the other turns over A,Q. I looked up at the board to see that the jackpot was $6000 for a $3-$6 table. The loser got 60% of that money ($3600), the winner of the hand got 20% ($1200) and the rest of the players at the table shared $1200. It was a full table so that worked out to $172 each.

The first thing that happens is floormen come over and verify that it is a complete deck and the cards are all in good condition. Once that is done, they take our drivers licenses and call the supervisor. He takes the two fellows into the back, makes them sign some forms and pays them off in chips. He then comes back with a form titled "20% Table Payout". After signing our names we get our money in chips and it's then time for the next hand.