The Texas Bad Beat Jackpot record was broken yesterday at the biggest card club in Texas, The Lodge Card Club, after two players flopped straight flushes in a $1/$2/$5 Pot-Limit Omaha game for around $290,000.
The flop came 5♣4♣3♣, and players were holding A♣2♣K♠6♠ vs. 7♣6♣A♦K♦, giving them both a monster hand. All the money went in and after J♥ on the turn and 5♥ on the river showdown triggered a bad beat jackpot.
By law, poker rooms in Texas are not allowed to take rake, so players pay membership fees to join the poker club. This is the main reason why BBJ works differently at The Lodge: It is not growing by the collected rake.
The jackpot started 190 days ago with $100,000 and increased by $1,000 each day until it was triggered at $290,000. For the Bad Beat Jackpot to be triggered, there are rules that must be met. Players must use both cards and lose with quads of tens or better. Except for the players at the table, every player who was sitting at the cash game table was awarded $200.
Bad Beat Jackpot also applies for PLO and Big O games, where the BBJ is even harder to trigger as it must happen on the flop, and the player must lose with a straight flush.
Kimberly Fortini, the dealer at The Lodge, was informed by her husband about the BBJ being triggered, and she was the first one to post about it on her X account.
Doug Polk’s Purchase of the Lodge
Since Polk bought the Lodge with two of his friends, Andrew Neeme and Brad Owen, in 2022, the Lodge has been growing and introducing new rewards, games, and events to stay ahead of the competition in Texas. They opened a restaurant and another poker room in San Antonio, which they are planning to make the largest poker room in the state.
The Lodge Card Club has around 70 poker tables to host major tournaments, and 20-25 of them are reserved for the cash games that run in big capacity over weekends.
The Lodge also has a live stream on YouTube, where they bring high-stakes poker action with prominent poker players like Doug Polk, Brad Owen, Garrett Adelstein, Mariano, Wolfgang Poker, Nik Airball, and more.
Polk and his partners are not going to stop there. They plan to upgrade the current poker rooms further and open new locations to grow the business.
