[Al_Capone_Junior]

I am not really that fond of anything that takes money off the table, but today's reality forces us to deal with it anyway. however, I much prefer high hand bonuses to bad beat jackpots. when a bad beat is hit, a TON of money goes bye-bye. Rarely will any of this money ever see the poker room again (As MM stated in one of the poker essays books, it's removed from the poker economy). In addition, the winner(s) of bad beat jackpots are almost purely random, there is little you can do but sit around and wait forever hoping you get stupid dumb lucky. Finally, in my experience, the jackpot "chasers" that flock to cardrooms with very large jackpots are generally not very desirable when it comes to having them around as regular customers. There are of course exceptions, but as a rule the procedure for most of these people is to play any pair, get the pot up to exactly what it needs to be to hit a jackpot, and not a dime more, then check it down hoping to hit. Not exactly action players.

Ironically, I don't mind if a small % of jackpot money is put into a SMALL bad beat jackpot. High hand bonuses are MUCH better because the money gets spread around to far more people, and the payouts are usually kept small enough to where the money is almost always recycled back into the cardroom right on the spot.

There are other promotions that make good use of jackpot drop, most notably the "wheel" at excalibur, which I think is a fantastic promotion. I have spun the wheel many times in the past, and so has almost everyone who plays there. Much fun, and I don't mind the dollar going down the slot nearly so much.

al