Bad Beat Jackpot hits for half mil at Caesars

There is only one thing that can make getting beat when you have four of a kind better, a bad beat jackpot! In Atlantic City this week, a 52 year old, had such a bad beat but also had a really good payout.

Steven Gedney of Dover, Delaware won the biggest Bad Beat jackpot in Atlantic City history of Friday afternoon. His wife called it good karma. Gedney was playing no-limit Texas Hold’em at Caesars Atlantic City when he finished with four 3s in his hand. But it wasn’t good enough to win the pot. Chris Dobrzanski of Bridgewater had four Aces in his hand.

That Bad Beat had just won Gedney more than $250,000.

“I just jumped up,” said Gedney, his face flush with excitement. He had been playing poker since about 2 p.m. when he hit the big one.

Aside from giving some of the windfall to charity, Gedney said he had no immediate plans for the money.

For those unfamiliar with poker lingo, a bad beat is when a player loses a strong hand to an even better hand held by an opponent.

Several Atlantic City casinos have bad-beat jackpots that keep growing until they are hit. Each casino has its own criteria for how high the losing hand has to be in order to qualify for the big prize.

The jackpot at Caesars had risen to $553,958 by the time it hit at 4:45 p.m. Friday, casino spokesman Christopher Jonic said.

That is much higher than the previous Atlantic City record of $361,244 that hit at Harrah’s Resort earlier this year.

According to Caesars rules, the losing player must have a hand of four-of-a-kind or better to qualify for the jackpot, Jonic said.

Because the jackpot was so large, there was a 31/2-hour wait to get a seat at a game in the poker room, Jonic said.

Everyone at the table got a share of the monster kitty, Jonic said. As the bad-beat “loser,” Gedney won half the jackpot, or $276,979. As winner of the hand, Dobrzanski won $138,489, plus the game pot of about $400. The other seven players received $19,784 each.

The casino brought out champagne and snacks for everyone at the table, as the played cards were still laid out on the green felt.
Gedney’s wife, Tabitha, said her husband’s win was “meant to be.” The couple usually plays poker at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, but had been going to Caesars lately because the bad beat jackpot was so large.

Steven Gedney owns JW’s Sports Bar in Dover, and business wasn’t doing too well as 2009 drew to a close, Tabitha Gedney said.
“He was going to let some people go, but said ‘I can’t do it, it’s Christmas time.

These people have families, these people have kids,’” Tabitha Gedney said. Instead, her husband just decided to eat the losses.
“It’s karma, it really is,” Tabitha Gedney said.

She added that she was playing a lower-limit game at a nearby table when she saw everyone at her husband’s table suddenly jump up. Then her husband called to her, “Tab, I just hit it.”

“He was shaking so bad, and I was saying good things happen to good people,” Tabitha Gedney said.

Dobrzanski said he held three aces, and drew his fourth ace on the river, the last card to show in a Texas Hold’Em hand. Gedney went all in, or bet all of his chips, when the card turned.

“I flipped my cards over, and I knew as soon as I stood up that it was the bad beat jackpot,” Dobrzanski said.

A once-in-a-while poker player at Caesars, Dobrzanski said he doesn’t know what he will do with his winnings.

Nicholas J. Rinaldi III, of Dix Hills, N.Y., said Dobrzanski decided to change seats at the table just two hands before he drew the four aces to beat Gedney’s four threes.
“When he sat down, he said, ‘Let’s hit the bad beat,’” Rinaldi said.

If Dobrzanski had stayed put, those four aces might have gone to his own spot, said Rinaldi, who was visiting Atlantic City to celebrate a friend’s birthday. But he wasn’t upset, as who is dealt which cards is a matter of pure luck.

Besides, he got a very nice consolation prize.
“It’s kind of just hitting me,” Rinaldi said.

News Added: 16 January, 2010

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