question for less lazy mathematicians....

So say you have an 8 handed stud game with a bad beat jackpot for quads or better being beaten. If the average hand has 3 people seeing their river card (whether they show down is irrelevant here I think) and the table plays 15 hands per hour how many hours do you need to play before you're a favorite to be involved in a bad beat (being involved meaning being at the table when it happens)? How many hours till you should have been one of the two "players" in the bad beat(loser or winner)?


I know we could try to come up with restrictions such as every 3 flush sees 4th, every pair sees at least 5th st. and every trip/straight flush draw sees the river; but I want to keep it simple. Mainly I want to bitch about paying off the bad beat box for hundreds of hours and never getting a taste of it and I'd like to see if the numbers support my belief that I've been screwed.

A.Y.Man,


I don't think the probability matters here since the bad beat will eventually happen. If the casino doesn't pull some of that bad beat money out for itself, then eventually (maybe not in your playing career though) all the money will be redistributed back to the players. It's just an insurance policy for getting a beautiful hand cracked.


Chris Villalobos

actually it happens fairly often(probably averages around once every 3 weeks), just never for me. So what I want to know is how many hours I need to have logged at such a table to be a favorite to hit it.

Well, if you know for a fact that it happens every three weeks and you can figure out how many total hands are played in that time period, then we can use the *binomial distribution* to figure out how many hands you have to play before you will get that bad beat with a certain confidence level (say 95%). Of course we need to make a huge assumption that everyone plays the same way, but this way is much easier than what you originally had in mind.


CV

If it hits once every three weeks and there is only one table in the poker room, then wouldn't you have to be at that table 50% of the time in order to be a favorite to hit it?


If there are two tables in the room, wouldn't you have to be there 100% of the time in order to be a favorite?


If there are three or more tables in the room, you can't be a favorite unless you play at multiple tables.

I don't understand why no one can figure out the question? He clearly estimated this three weeks figure, and he is not trying to figure out the likelihood he should have hit it in a three week period. He wants to know how many hands do you have to play to have been at the table and seen the jackpot hit, and cash because of it. I would answer it, but I am not Emperor Sklansky. Maybe he'll come down from the mountain and spit out a number.


My estimation is you haven't been screwed. If anyone's been screwed it been me. Well, at least no ones taken it worse than Paul.

well the number of tables open varies and the 3 weeks is just an estimate(it's happened twice in one day and it's gone 4 monthes without hitting, I was just giving the guy a rough number).

I don't understand the confusion here. I simply wanted a rough probability on hitting a bad beat on any given hand (say 1 in 15000

It's hard to answer your question because people play differently. Most quads hands start as pairs, and I have made four Queens when my starting cards were Ad7d3d. A player who plays every hand to the end no matter what has a better chance of hitting the jackpot than a guy who is somewhat selective with his starting hands than. The more selective you are, the more you hurt your jackpot chances. I am not suggesting for a moment that you loosen up to help your jackpot chances; I'm just stating the facts of the matter. If you're playing well, you should be folding some live pairs that might have made quads. Depending on the texture of the game, you might find yourself folding a lot of those pairs. The jackpot games that I still occasionally find myself playing in are such that I limp in with a lot of pairs because people will pay me off all the way even if I hit my door card. Suffice to say that the better you play, the less equity you have in the jackpot. That in and of itself should make you not like it. It also adds a lot of variance. If you're playing jackpot games, I assume you're on a limited bankroll, so this is something else you shouldn't like. I'm not saying you shouldn't play in jackpot games. I have found them, relative to the stakes, to be quite profitable. And jackpots do attract people whose only hope of winning is hitting the jackpot. I think that they are, overall, very bad for the game, but that's another sermon.


I'm going to answer your question in a different way. It is extremely likely that you are getting screwed by the jackpot drop. My local room does not pay out 100% of the jackpot money, and I believe that it is common practice for the house to take a little juice. You can ask someone at your local room, and they should be able to tell you exactly how it is paid out. The structure of Canterbury Card Club's jackpots is posted near the bathrooms. Ten percent is taken off of the top for "administrative expenses." This strikes me as a crock. I have said so to anyone who has asked, and several people who didn't. An additional 15% is used for promotional purposes. This includes things like drawings, tournament guarantees, comps (a rarity), and I think the hats that they give away for straight flushes. Players who play $10/20 and up can participate in promotions even though they contribute nothing to their funding. So 75 cents out of every dollar goes into the jackpot fund. Out of that, some amount goes towards "seed" money, so that the jackpot doesn't go down to zero every time it goes off. The minimums are $1200 for stud and Omaha and I think $2000 or $2500 for hold'em. There are also two reserves so that when the jackpot gets big and goes off, the next jackpot is at least reasonably big. Anyway, a significant portion of the dollar that gets contributed from almost every pot does not get paid out with the jackpot. I suspect that this is the case with your local room. Ask one of the floor staff the next time you're there.


How large is the jackpot when it goes off, on average? You're probably aware of how big it is when you're in a game. You probably know how big it was the last time it went off. If it averages $10k and they pay out 100%, it then you've probably got about one chance in 10000 of your table hitting it on any given deal. Adjust your estimate based on the payout, and this should give you an idea. In any case, it can't be a good gamble for you.

I appreciate your post Andy but everyone, except the terminally lazy JV, seems to be missing the point. This isn't a strategy question, or a game choice question, I was simply wondering about it. I'm not suggesting altering play to improve my chances of hitting a jackpot, I'm not asking whether or not it's good for me that one of the boats I play at has a bad beat jackpot, (I know that it isn't), I just want to know the probability on any given hand of a Jackpot being hit. I gave some parameters, I said to ignore conditional probability issues, I really don't think it's all that difficult and I'm surprised there aren't people on this forum that can snap off the numbers fairly quickly. Allright, allright, you all win, I'll figure the damn thing out myself.