Recently, one member of UB.com hit the jackpot, literally. “RUNURAGGED” earned $201,000 after quad queens cracked his quad nines to ignite the Bad Beat Jackpot on the CEREUS Network site. Poker News Daily caught up with “RUNURAGGED” to discuss the life-changing hand.
Poker News Daily: Thanks for joining us. Tell us the bad beat story! What happened?
RUNURAGGED: I logged onto UB.com one morning to see that the Bad Beat Jackpot was over $550,000. I also saw that I had $0 on the site. I got my credit card and deposited $44 for a tournament they run everyday, the goal being to final table it and have a bankroll to play cash games. I was quite confident I could do this because it was $4,000 guaranteed and had about 150 runners. I finished in sixth place for $270 or so; there was my bankroll for $50nl short stacking.
I proceeded to take a break and logged back on at about 10:00pm. I opened up nine tables and put $10 on each to have lots of chances to hit and not run out of money before the Bad Beat Jackpot popped. I was playing away, folding most pairs under sevens since they do not qualify for the Jackpot if you lose with them, and picked up pocket nines under the gun in the bottom left-hand table. I shoved $10 and it folded to one of the blinds, who snap called with pocket queens.
The board ran out 9-9-X rainbow, so I flopped quad nines, but basically had no chance for a Bad Beat Jackpot except for the obvious runner-runner quads. I watched as the turn slowly came a queen and was thinking in my head, “Wow, I’ve had this happen before and the river came a brick. I bet that happens again.” The river came a queen.
It took my brain about 10 seconds to process that I had actually won, as the table froze once the Jackpot hit to calculate the prizes and determine that it was a legitimate hand. Within about five minutes, $201,000 was in my account and I was talking to a VIP host. He told me exactly what to do when I asked how to cash it out. He gave all of the methods to withdraw and asked me some questions about how I was feeling and stuff like that, which was pretty cool. I faxed my information to confirm who I was for security reasons and within two or three days, I was able to play, transfer, and withdraw with freedom except for the maximum limits.
PND: How incredible was that to have happen?
RUNURAGGED: I don’t even have the words to describe the feelings I had when I saw I had won. There was a large amount of swearing and shouting at Midnight. I woke everyone up and they were very excited to see the result. I’m only 22 years old and from a middle class home in Canada. This kind of money is absolutely unreal and I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.
PND: Do you have any plans for the money?
RUNURAGGED: I’ll start making plans once I have it all in my bank account. The first successful bank wire went toward a new Alienware computer, paying off my credit card, getting a new leather office chair, and giving $7,000 to my mom for her credit cards and some extra cash for whatever small things she wants to buy. So, mostly it was just buying essentials and giving financial support to my family.
PND: Have you ever won a share of a Bad Beat Jackpot before?
RUNURAGGED: A stake-share happened to me a few times in the past, not even a table share though. I think I booked $600 one time when it went off when I was playing nine tables. That was pretty nice and I thought it was a lot of money.
PND: What stakes do you normally play? Why do you play on UB.com as opposed to other sites with Bad Beat Jackpots?
RUNURAGGED: I mostly play $0.50/$1 or $0.25/$0.50 if my bankroll is getting too small. I never had a huge bankroll to begin with and I’ve only been playing poker seriously for about two years, so it’s mostly just been playing for side money. I find UB.com to be by far the most actively played Bad Beat Jackpot on the internet. It can easily build itself up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per week. It makes sense to play there if you want to hit a Jackpot or at least get a portion of the prize when it goes off.
PND: Tell us about gunning for Bad Beat Jackpots. How can we win one?
RUNURAGGED: Generally, UB.com was not a site I frequented too often, but when I logged on to check it, which I do maybe once a week, I saw that there was a huge Bad Beat Jackpot approaching $600,000. When it’s over $500,000, it will hit eventually; it pretty much has to. Like a slot machine filled up to the brim, it’s designed to pay out a jackpot eventually once enough cash is collected.
I know it’s generally not the same mechanics, but it’s the same idea: if enough people play millions of poker hands, it has to happen eventually. I have never seen it go off above $880,000, so if you are going to try to hit it, play when it’s busy and very large. Of course, a Bad Beat Jackpot can hit when there are 75 players on at 3:00am on a Tuesday and it’s at $50,000. It’s completely random luck when it hits, but the variable chance that it hits will most certainly increase with more player activity on the site.
PND: How did you get started in poker?
RUNURAGGED: I got started messing around with online poker in late 2007 when I was 19. I asked my mom if I could play on PokerStars, as a fellow player in an online video game recommended the site to me. I put $50 online and lost it rather quickly in cash games. For the first six to 12 months, it was a learning process of figuring out what types of games I preferred: cash games, sit and gos, or tournaments. I was not very good at them all, but the sit and gos and tournaments were the easiest to win.
In the middle of 2009, I got lucky on Full Tilt Poker and binked a fourth place finish in a tournament for $7,600. I still remember that it was in a Mini Series of Poker event with a $55 buy-in. This basically funded a whole bunch of cool gadgets like an iPhone and computers. Plus, it allowed me to have a solid bankroll for low-stakes cash games.
Eventually, I got a bit better and profitable when I started using training videos and sites like DeucesCracked, CardRunners, TwoPlusTwo, and a private strategy forum with friends called UCP. They all helped me greatly since I’ve taken a serious approach to the game. About one year ago, I shifted mostly to cash games and a few tournaments and sit and gos. My greatest calling for a future career in poker is in mid-stakes cash games, which I consider to be true poker.
