Playground Poker Club Pays Out $1.5m Bad Beat Jackpot After Two Straight Flushes!

A really big bad beat jackpot isn’t paid out often, least of all by a casino who seemingly do it all the time but this week’s bumper $1.6m win for players at the Playground Poker Club in Montreal saw dozens of players of all levels raising a glass of champagne (above) as they celebrated winning. But who won what and how was the bad beat jackpot reached?

How Much Did Playground Poker Club Pay Out?

One of the biggest bad beat jackpots ever awarded was won in Canada this week, as the Playground Poker Club (PPC) in Montreal awarded $1.6m in Canadian dollars (around $1.5m) after two straight flushes hit in the same hand! The PPC is the most popular cardroom in Canada and one of the World Poker Tour’s stops in its global Main Event series that awards winners millions of dollars every year, as well as the honor of having their names engraved on the Mike Sexton Champions Cup.

This week saw the second-largest PPC bad beat jackpot handed out to players inside the club in Quebec, where the late, great Mike Sexton himself finally won a WPT Main Event back in 2016. What are the odds of two straight flushes hitting in the same hand? Well, hundreds of thousands to one, which is exactly why the bad beat jackpot was so large.

Two years ago in August of 2023 at the Playground Poker Club, quads lost to a straight flush to award the biggest-ever bad beat jackpot of CAD$2.6m to players who were dumbstruck after playing the most rewarding $1/$2 no-limit hold‘em cash game of their lives. At the PPC, every bad beat jackpot is only awarded after both players (or more) in the hand use both their hole cards to make their high-ranking bad beat hand.

How Did the Hand Play Down to the Jackpot?

In what was an unbelievable hand, a flop of 4-5-6 with two clubs landed, with one player – Bill – holding four-three of clubs. His opponent in the hand, Darin, had eight-nine of clubs and both players saw the turn of a seven of clubs land to give both men a straight flush! It was an incredible slice of luck for Darin in some ways but in others, not so much due to the PPC bad beat jackpot rules.

That’s because after the hand ended and the cards were on their backs, Bill had the losing hand of a straight flush and as the losing player in the hand – i.e. the one who was ‘bad beat’, – he won 40% of the $1.6 million jackpot. Darin claimed 20% of the jackpot as the other player involved in the hand, as he had the winning hand.

It was as the clock at the PPC went past midnight that the initial security checks began, with the Assistant Director of Poker Operations at the PPC Andrew Johnson approving the payout of $1,595,087. After Bill’s 40% and Darin’s 20% of the prize pot were claimed, the other players at the table in question won 20% of the pot, with the rest of the players in seats at the club at the time of the jackpot being won splitting the final slice of 20%. With 20% of the bad beat jackpot worth $319,017, that’s one of the biggest nights in the Playground Poker Club’s illustrious history.

What Are the Odds of Two Straight Flushes in the Same Hand?

The odds of two players getting a straight flush in the same hand are extremely low, making it an astronomically rare event, especially in bricks and mortar poker rather than online. For two players to get a straight flush, the five community cards must allow two separate sets of five cards to form a straight flush and at the PPC, since both players need to play both their hole cards, this scenario required seven consectuve cards in the same suit to be present, with both players having a different ‘end’ of the straight.

A straight flush has a 0.00139% probability of arriving with five random cards, so the chances of a second player also making one in the very same hand is dependent on the first player’s hand, making the odds multiply significantly. In Texas Hold‘em, getting two straight flushes is extremely unlikely due to the limited number of community cards. The odds are calculated based on the specific community cards that would have to be on the board to allow for two such hands.

How does drawing two straight flushes in the same hand compare to other long odds gambling probabilities? Well, the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are around one in 80 million, and this seems rare given all the complexities of card combinations that are required to take place. We’d put the odds of two straight flushes in the same hand at over a billion to one, leaving us with one quirky question.

Imagine if Bill had just folded his four-three suited pre-flop!