High hand jackpot progression (1 Viewer)

Beaniman

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I am running a high hand jackpot at my home game for a bottle of 21 year scotch.

I'm starting with a royal flush but plan on downranking it each week to a point where it resets if no one wins.

I'm sure this has been done before, anyone have a template for something like this? Or recommendation on how far the sequence should go before hitting the next rank?

After royal > straight flush to K, then Q etc.. Down to 10 high straight flush.
Then AAAA > KKKK... down to Js

Then AAAKK down to AAAJJ and rotating through Kings full down to... JJJAA as bottom rank? Not sure where a good stopping point would be before reset. I don't want to make it TOO easy.

Looking for feedback, criticism or recommendations. Is monthly downgrade better vs weekly? Etc...
 
Not quite sure I understand.

So week 1, Only a RF wins the prize. Week 2, A RF or a King-hi SF wins the prize? Or it has to be exactly a King-hi SF in week 2?

Are you taking a weekly collecting to pay for the prize?

Is this a league that resets periodically or just cash games that run weekly?

Instead of the declining progression, perhaps another idea would be to have the bottle serve as a 'high hand bonus' after a certain amount of games with no minimum hand ranking threshold. For example, if after 10 weeks (or whatever time period you set) the highest hand seen is quad 9's, the prize is awarded and the high hand is reset for another 10 weeks. This takes the timing element out of the equation.

I think if you run it the way you described, you might upset someone at some point. For example, say someone makes a 6 high SF in the first game. Obviously that doesn't win since only a Royal wins the prize at that point. But in week # 10 (when the threshold has been lowered to quad Aces) another player makes a 6-high SF and is awarded the prize. Might not sit well with the first guy.

As a point of reference, in the Moxie Poker League, we have a $50 high hand bonus with quad deuces as the min. If a player makes a qualifying hand using both hole cards and it remains the high hand through the rest of that tournament they get paid the bonus - and that hand becomes the new min threshold to beat. If a player makes a RF at any point, the bonus is paid immediately and the threshold is reset back down to quad 2's.
 
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Not quite sure I understand.

So week 1, Only a RF wins the prize. Week 2, A RF or a King-hi SF wins the prize? Or it has to be exactly a King-hi SF in week 2?

Are you taking a weekly collecting to pay for the prize?

I think if you run it the way you described, you might upset someone at some point. For example, say someone makes a 6 high SF in the first game. Obviously that doesn't win since only a Royal wins the prize at that point. But in week # 10 (when the threshold has been lowered to quad Aces) another player makes a 6-high SF and is awarded the prize. Might not sit well with the first guy.
So my thought was that as a "Jackpot" they would need exactly that weeks hand. Admittedly the goal is to make it very difficult to win. although there are 48 combinations of Quad Kings and only 4 combination of Royal Flush possible so Quad Kings is vastly more likely from a statistical standpoint. KKKAA is even more combinations.

No League or anything like that, just a 25c/50c 1 table game I host in my kitchen. It doesn't even happen every week if we don't have the numbers.

There's no rake & no collection or pay into it. 100% donation from me to generate talk and interest players. I think if I was getting say a couple bucks from each person each week I would agree with you on the award to highest hand on record after X number of weeks. So a Royal flush would win if it was downranked all the way to AAAKK before someone one.

I wonder if I just called it "Jackpot" hand, could I just use a random number generator to create a random hand each week. Winning that is even less likely, statistically (i think) than KKKK. Math wizards correct me, but say a Royal flush is any 1 of 4 combinations of 5 exact cards, vs a random number generated hand of 5 exact cards. That would remove the issue of someone getting a Royal when the jackpot is AAAKK and still not winning it would just always be a random jackpot. It would also create more agro play like the "Seven Deuce" rule, because if the jackpot was 5c,4c,10s,Js,2d when you see the 10sJs on the flop you gata wonder if someone's getting crazy with five two.

I see your point about someone being upset, do you think this random idea would prevent that? Or is that just stupid? What would you think if you were in a game with a randomly generated Jackpot? Would you just be happy it's free stuff or want it to be more structured? Is it even a factor since nobody is paying into the jackpot, it's 100% me just donating a 175$ bottle of Scotch.
 
So my thought was that as a "Jackpot" they would need exactly that weeks hand. Admittedly the goal is to make it very difficult to win. although there are 48 combinations of Quad Kings and only 4 combination of Royal Flush possible so Quad Kings is vastly more likely from a statistical standpoint. KKKAA is even more combinations.

No League or anything like that, just a 25c/50c 1 table game I host in my kitchen. It doesn't even happen every week if we don't have the numbers.

There's no rake & no collection or pay into it. 100% donation from me to generate talk and interest players. I think if I was getting say a couple bucks from each person each week I would agree with you on the award to highest hand on record after X number of weeks. So a Royal flush would win if it was downranked all the way to AAAKK before someone one.

I wonder if I just called it "Jackpot" hand, could I just use a random number generator to create a random hand each week. Winning that is even less likely, statistically (i think) than KKKK. Math wizards correct me, but say a Royal flush is any 1 of 4 combinations of 5 exact cards, vs a random number generated hand of 5 exact cards. That would remove the issue of someone getting a Royal when the jackpot is AAAKK and still not winning it would just always be a random jackpot. It would also create more agro play like the "Seven Deuce" rule, because if the jackpot was 5c,4c,10s,Js,2d when you see the 10sJs on the flop you gata wonder if someone's getting crazy with five two.

I see your point about someone being upset, do you think this random idea would prevent that? Or is that just stupid? What would you think if you were in a game with a randomly generated Jackpot? Would you just be happy it's free stuff or want it to be more structured? Is it even a factor since nobody is paying into the jackpot, it's 100% me just donating a 175$ bottle of Scotch.

If you keep moving the goalpost I doubt the prize would ever be won. The odds of tabling any specific straight flush are about 1 in 650,000 hands. So you don't make it any easier to hit by going progressing from a royal to specifically a king-high SF.

I don't like rules that encourage people to play stupid (like the 7-2 promotions). If you really want to give your bottle away in a fun way, give it to the first person who gets aces cracked at showdown, or for something that's relatively uncommon (like set over set) but will eventually occur. Or set some bad beat parameters (less strict than casinos though). I wouldn't overthink it... unless it's something easily attainable, most people aren't going to pay too much attention I wouldn't think.
 
I really like the bad beat idea, thinking it over I came up with this.

If you get a straight flush you probably just won a bunch of money, plus a bottle of scotch. If it's a bad beat then you may lose a bunch of money, but can sooth your wounded soul with some fantastic scotch! Excellent recommendation & I think I'm going to go with this. I remember playing at a cardroom where they had a cumulative bad beat jackpot for Jacks full or better getting cracked. Again I don't want to make it too easy (AA if it makes it to the river is cracked just about as often as it's good in my experience). Do you thin Jacks full is "too strict". Keeping in mind it's 20$min 50$ max buyin game.
 
Losing with quads or better (with two in the hole) is sufficiently difficult (and heartbreaking) to qualify for a BBJ imo. Personally, I'd go with aces-full as the threshold.
 

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