Southern California’s first Mega Share Bad Beat Jackpot just hit at $208, 085 late Friday night, paying off 30 percent of the jackpot ($62,501.00) to the losing hand of four queens to Monique Tolentino of Murrieta.

The royal flush held by Perry Panno may have won the pot, but took second in the jackpot payoff, with 20 percent or $41,617.  Such is the nature of a “Bad Beat” jackpot, where the losing hand wins. In the Pechanga Poker Room, it took beating quad tens or better to trigger.

When the high hands were declared, there are two qualifying rules that come into play: both the winning and losing hands must play their two hole cards, with the board playing first. In this instance four queens (Qc,Qd,Qh,Qs,Ac) was beaten out by nothing less than a royal flush of clubs (10c, Jc, Qc, Kc, Ac). It is a requirement of the jackpot trigger to use both hole cards for each hand, which they were in this instance.

The other six players at the table shared 30 percent ($62,426) of the jackpot, or  $10,404 per seat. In addition, all 183 active Texas Hold’em players in the room took home a combined 20 percent ($41,541) of the jackpot, or $227 per seat.

The Pechanga Mega Share Bad Beat Jackpot is funded by a portion of a $1 promotional drop per hand in all live Texas Hold’em games. Thus, the Mega Share Bad Beat Jackpot increases with every Texas Hold’em hand and has now been reset to $93,453. However, in order to increase players’ chances of winning, the jackpot will begin a new tier system, whereby as each ten thousand dollars is added to the jackpot, the hand qualifier reduces by one (i.e. – quad 7’s, quad 6’s etc.) until any four-of-a-kind qualifies at $130,000. 

TEMECULA, Calif. Sept. 22 - A San Diego County woman hit a $2,407,474.85 jackpot this afternoon at Pechanga Resort & Casino on an Indiana Jones penny slot machine, making her the second winner in less than a year to strike a jackpot of more than $1 million on the same bank of machines.

The jackpot comes less than a year after a Long Beach man played with pennies and went home a millionaire at Pechanga. In October 2009, the lucky winner struck a $1,061,225.26 Jackpot on the machine located directly behind the $2.4 million winner today.

“Pechanga has more slots than any other casino in California and far more than any in Las Vegas,” said Pechanga VP of Slots Buddy Frank. “It stands to reason that we also have more jackpots than anyone else. When someone wins a once-in-a-lifetime jackpot, it creates an excitement on the floor with both our guests and our Team Members.”

There is also a $100,000 Mega Share Bad Beat jackpot expected to hit this weekend in the Pechanga Poker Room as well. When this progressive poker jackpot hits, every active Texas Hold’em player in the Pechanga Poker Room will take home a share of the winnings. It is the first Mega Share Poker Jackpot ever to be offered in Southern California.

It always amazes us how close some of our community members can predict our payout in jackpots (although the majority of predictions are far under as it’s still a surprising number to many).

For this edition of ‘Predict the Jackpots,’ we went for the most challenging of all: Predict the total payout for the entire month of April. With the help of Always More Winners, some were able to predict within thousands of dollars (an impressive feat).

The total payout in jackpots for April turned out to be $39.7 million. Congrats to Donna C. whose prediction was within a mere fifty thousand dollars. She won a $250 Pechanga gift card and was more than happy to take the crown as Pechanga’s new ‘Predict the Jackpots’ champion.