A perfect card on the turn triggered the poker room at Montreal’s Playground casino to erupt with confetti and cheers as yet another enormous bad beat jackpot was hit.

A straight flush over straight flush sent the table into a frenzy, and for the two players involved in the hand, the bad beat turned a night of playing $1/2 poker into one that will never be forgotten. Since the jackpot had grown to CAD $1,515,332, the payouts to the two players were enormous.

Holding 34 of clubs, and wearing a great poker shirt that read “Worlds Okayest Poker Player,” Bill H. received the largest cut of the jackpot– a whopping CAD $638,000 — after the turn gave him a straight flush to the 7. Fortunately for him and everyone else in Playground’s card room, his opponent held 89 of clubs, for his own monster hand.

That man, Darin H., won CAD $319,017, or 20% of the jackpot. Each of the seven other players at the table won CAD $45,000 each, with the rest of the players in the card room splitting CAD $319,017.

The casino has a history of awarding mind-numbingly large bad beat jackpots, which are fed by the players and grow into monsters the longer a bad beat isn’t hit. And interestingly enough, the huge bad beats seem to hit more whenever a special event is being played at the Playground.

This one came during the Major Series of Poker’s Canadian Poker Championship, which began Wednesday.

The last gargantuan bad beat jackpot that was hit there happened last October during a World Poker Tour event. The players split-up CAD $2.2 million ($1. 7 million), with the “loser” receiving CAD $864,000 (USD $640,004).

In August of 2023, a bad beat jackpot worth nearly $2 million was also hit at the Playground. The Playground, like most card rooms that hold bad beat jackpots, distributes the money this way:

• 40% of the Bad Beat Jackpot is awarded to the Bad Beat hand (losing hand).
• 20% of the Bad Beat Jackpot is awarded to the winner of the hand.
• 20% of the Bad Beat Jackpot is awarded in equal shares among the balance of signed-in players at the table where the Bad Beat Jackpot was hit.
• 20% of the Bad Beat Jackpot is awarded in equal shares among all other signed-in cash game players anywhere on the property.

The minimum qualifying hands also change as the bad beat jackpot grows. For example, the bad beat jackpot at the Playground, which now sits at CAD $195,000, has a minimum qualifying hand of quad aces. That will change to quad kings, then queens, all the way down to twos — if it ever gets that far — until someone hits it.