The UB.com Bad Beat Jackpot has officially reached astronomical heights. The prize pool, which will eventually be claimed when a player’s quad eights or better are cracked, currently stands at over $1 million. It took about an hour for the final $20,000 to tick away towards the seven-figure mark and players are logged into the site en masse trying to claim their share.
According to PokerScout.com, which keeps tabs on online poker room traffic, nearly 6,400 cash game players are seated on the CEREUS Network, which consists of UB.com and its sister site Absolute Poker. The network has experienced three straight days of peak cash game player counts above 5,000 and UB.com’s website has been continuously seeing slow load times as players flood it looking for a six-figure payday.
On PocketFives.com, players talked about the massive cash windfall up for grabs in a thread in the site’s Poker Discussion forum. One poster wrote over the weekend, “What’s the highest [it’s ever been]? It just cleared $800K and I’ve been 10 tabling for 2 hours.” Another member of the poker community shared his near-Jackpot experience: “Flopped top set against a guy’s flopped straight flush around the $600K mark. Sick freeroll for $200K or whatever it is and obviously brick-brick.”
When the Bad Beat Jackpot is eventually claimed, UB.com will take 35% off the top. Of that, 25% will be used to re-seed the new jackpot and 10% goes to UB.com’s coffers. Of the remaining 65%, half will be given to the bad beat victim and one-quarter will be awarded to the winner of the pot. Then, every other player at the table will bank $1,000 and the rest of the prize pool will be distributed evenly to players seated at other tables of the same stakes and game type.
Only designated Bad Beat Jackpot tables count. They come in regular and Turbo formats and appear in the UB.com lobby with a “J” next to their name. In order for a hand to qualify, quad eights or better must lose out and the players involved must use both hole cards to make up their final hands. The Jackpot rake of $0.50 must be taken as well.
If the Bad Beat Jackpot were hit at the $1 million mark, the loser of the hand would score over $300,000. Prior to today, UB.com’s largest Bad Beat Jackpot was $996,000, which was recorded in June 2008.
UB.com features a hip set of up-and-coming pros that includes Joe Sebok, Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin, and Prahlad Friedman, its newest face. UB.com and Absolute Poker happily take action from the United States. Play now.
Earlier this month, the Microgaming Network Bad Beat Jackpot was triggered twice in a 24-hour period. The first time around, quad tens lost out to a royal flush for $558,000. Shortly thereafter, a straight flush trumped quad jacks for another $114,000. Needless to say, February has been a lucrative month for those who frequent the Bad Beat Jackpot tables across the world’s largest online poker sites.
