Bad Beat Bonus @ Ultimate Texas Hold’Em
A reader recently asked about the new two-way Bad Beat Bonus in Ultimate Texas Hold’Em. It’s pretty easy these days to crunch out the numbers, so I took an hour to work this one out. After all, I might see the bet somewhere, and I’m becoming a sucker for bonus bets lately 🙂
Well, at a 14.8% house edge, I’ll probably look for a better paytable before I play this bet. Has anyone seen any other paytables out there?
| Losing Hand | Frequency | Probability | Payout | Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 0 | 0.000000% | 0 | 0.000000 |
| Straight Flush | 10,300,592 | 0.000370% | 7500 | 0.027776 |
| Four-of-a-Kind | 471,040,512 | 0.016935% | 500 | 0.084677 |
| Full House | 8,435,225,376 | 0.303275% | 50 | 0.151637 |
| Flush | 19,434,208,592 | 0.698725% | 30 | 0.209618 |
| Straight | 18,271,076,976 | 0.656907% | 20 | 0.131381 |
| Three-of-a-Kind | 64,049,759,448 | 2.302804% | 9 | 0.207252 |
| Two Pairs | 399,099,149,640 | 14.348956% | -1 | -0.143490 |
| One Pair | 1,366,512,556,968 | 49.130722% | -1 | -0.491307 |
| High Card | 791,967,420,480 | 28.473892% | -1 | -0.284739 |
| push | 113,130,263,816 | 4.067413% | -1 | -0.040674 |
| Total | 2,781,381,002,400 | 100.0000% | -0.147868 |
Discount Gambling 
Here is the Paytable for Lake Elsinore’s Bad Beat Bonus:
Straight flush: 10,000 to 1
Quads: 500 to 1
Full House: 40 to 1
Flush: 25 to 1
Straight: 20 to 1
Trips: 9 to 1
Wow. That’s even worse at a 20.4% house edge.
what’s crazy is everyone who plays there usually plays minimum on the blind and ante ($5), but goes crazy on the trips and Bad Beat Bonus ($25-$30 on each)…and these are poker players doing this! Supposedly someone hit the bonus last week for $25,000 (max payout).
Now that I know exactly how bad that bet is, I will try to resist going there. Only reason I go there is to play Omaha/8 and because it is the closest casino that has UTH.
you know, I could see putting down $2 on this…I guess.
What would make this bet palatable for real would be to be able to place it after the flop.
You got your quads mixed up with the absent Royal Flush
There is no bad beat to a Royal, since a Royal cannot be beat. It has been over a year since I have gone to Lake E, so I could very well be wrong.
Stephen, could you give a thumbnail on how the edge is calculated? Is this simply brute-force running out all possible hands/boards?