My one and only table share has already become the subject of a localized Mandela effect. The subject of jackpots comes up more often than it should, and I pointed out the guy that had the losing hand in my only table share in 2013. A guy at the table (who was not involved in the jackpot) insisted that he was there and it was ~10 years ago at the time (this conversation took place last year - I think, given the context of this story). We moved to the area in 2010, so it's impossible the hand could have taken place in 2007. It got to the point where he actually went over to the guy that was involved and he agreed that it was ~10 years ago.

(I still have the w-2g and it was 2013)

I got a winner's share to the tune of $9K at Lucky Chances in (I think) 2004. I could go through my records to actually look it up.

I have gotten a table share a couple of times at the Oaks, the most recently this past August. They now have two jackpots for hold'em: a big one ($50K) for 8888+ beat and a small one ($10K) for AAAJJ+ beat. August's was a small one, and my share was $500 (less toke).

Out of over 6,000 hours of live play, I’ve never received a nickel in jackpot.

I was at a convention in Pekin, Illinois once and there were two tables of 1-2 nl at like 1 an on a Tuesday at the Par-a-dice casino. The other table won a jackpot of $600k (quad tens beaten) and I was sad.

Brag: the guy who got the big end bought lots of drinks
Variance: won $2k playing 1-2

I was part of a stud-7 jackpot.

It was $1500.

Total.

I’ve gotten one table share ever and I had the second best hand! 2s3s4s5s5c board I had the lone As vs quad 5s and 76ss

The first two times I played poker I won a table share. I thought about quitting my job and going pro. Thankfully I came to my senses. I didn't win a table share again for ten years and did it twice in the same week.

My one big share win came when I was tilted. I had QQ's on A74 board and was raised on the flop by a straightforward nit. It should have been an easy fold. The turn and river went A A giving me 6k.

Another benefit to moving up to 20/40(No jackpot) is that I no longer make theoretically bad decisions in order to win a jackpot. It adds up.

For my 10k post I would like to talk about the appeal of the longshot.

Don't chase longshots at bad odds. The less money you have, the more conservative you should be even chasing +ev longshots.

that's all.

Did you muck without showing? I suspect there are more than a few places where this would not be a valid jackpot if the As was tabled.

Not in my experience. There are two eligible hands and that's what's needed.

Yesterday I'd 3-bet QQ only to see the AAK flop of death. ONE MORE ACE!!!, dammit, would've been worth $7.5K to me bec the BB held AK. Dammit!!!, again.

Would have had blackjack monies again!!

I hit a 30k losing end of a jackpot in 2008 and a 1500ish table share of one in 2012-13. Have had quite a few jackpot hands in non jackpot games and online

The 30k one is funny for a couple reasons.

First being that it was in 40/80 and at the time I barely played that small, and when I did, it was at a place that didnt have a jackpot in the 40 (imagine a $4 drop in a 40/80 game. It was the best of times) but Mike L convinced me to go to HG for the first time ever because I had been doing poorly and wanted a change of scenery. So I almost completely forgot that jackpots were a thing that existed.

The second funny part is that I had AA on AT3T7 or something and raise/4bet or 6 bet the river and the guy just called so I naturally assumed he had AT and I won. So I won the jackpot and saved money because a guy failed to continue raising with the nuts

Thanks for the phenomenal story.

Mind boggled someone called with nuts on a jackpot hand with the nuts.

Guess I have seen it live a couple times but not on a jackpot eligible hand.

I mean, that's the rake in the 40 game I play (2.5% rake, max $4 on flop games, $5 on stud/draw)

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

Big prizes can have a negative effect on otherwise conservative, winning strategies used to beat gambling games. The most successful gamblers will be those that pass on the unprofitable spots, no matter how enticing the big prizes are. A negative expectation bet is a negative expectation bet no matter how you cut it.

By the way, I'm not trying to preach. This is actually a very introspective topic for me to have brought up.

?? You were thrown in prison for awhile?

I was listening to an investment show that said the exact opposite. His example was, suppose you had hundreds of billions of dollars. You don't have to take on any risk at all, you don't have to earn income. It's all the money you will ever need. Now look at the converse - you have 5 bucks. You might as well buy lottery tickets, because you have nothing to lose. 5 bucks isn't going to make any difference, so you might as well take a big gamble.

BTW, I have never won a dime of bad beat jackpot share. That might be because most of my hours have been in non-jackpot rooms.

If we didn't need to eat to live, that would hold. Since we have to eat to live, that $5 is more valuable than such analysis suggests. On a long enough timeline with zero income, everyone's net worth drops to zero.

ITT philosophy of economics suddenly becomes important.

There's a diminishing utility of money thing that pig4bill is correctly citing -- if you have more money than you'd ever care to spend, getting even more has zero worth to you. Sure, the risk is meaningless.

On the flip side, if you have very little money you can't afford to take risks that are more like entertainment expenses. If you spend $5/week on the lottery, you're probably more likely to have additional expensive credit card debt or some other bad outcome.

You're both right on the extreme you're talking about. There's probably some utility curve of even slightly +EV longshot lotteries that's biased to people who can afford it but who aren't in the mega rich. Even the reasonably well off can probably find higher EV longshots to play... the likely truth is that lottery "investing" is a thing that almost never makes sense.

Your stories always make me smile.

Right, because if you're rich enough to be able to risk the money, you probably don't need any more.

Right, your last 5 bucks is likely better spent on food or gas.

Specifically, there's a weird bubble in utility (relative to monetary worth) just outside what people can reasonably earn without hitting a jackpot.

Playing a 0.000001 dollar lottery for a 1/1000000 chance at $1 is thoroughly boring, even if you can afford to waste 0.000001 dollars. But a 1 dollar lottery for a 1/1000000 chance at $1,000,000 is more appealing because not everyone can earn $1,000,000 without the lottery.

For most Americans, with incomes in the 5-figure income, it's exactly this sort of low to mid millions range that is appealing as a "just beyond reach" level of wealth. Change the jackpot to like a billion and people wouldn't know what to do with it, and change it to less than a million and people find it attainable.

That's what would seem logical to me as well, yet the lottery seems to get much more popular when the prizes get insanely high, like when one reached a billion (?!) recently. People were driving from Las Vegas (which must have more gambling options than anyplace else in the world), to Arizona and California, just to play for the huge lotto jackpot. It doesn't make sense to me, because even the typical lotto jackpots of $20 million or whatever would be more than I would ever know what to do with, but they are more popular.

I'm willing to admit that I called my brother and told him to buy some lottery tickets for me for the billion dollar lottery. Why? Mostly for the amusement of possibly winning a billion dollar lottery and not because I had realistic plans for what I would do with it.

The billion dollar value is nothing special other than our particular way of writing numbers. It gets extra media hype and all that, which drives interest and people like me are willing to throw away a few bucks for some abstract distant possibility.

But there is at least a moderately reasonable explanation for waiting for big jackpots before playing. It's a lot like passing on progressive slot machines until the payout is beyond a certain value. While it may not actually be +EV, the larger the jackpot becomes the closer to +EV it will be.

There's also the fact that waiting around helps to moderating the pace of play and therefore loses less over time.

I would question the immediate vs. long term value of your last $5. If it was literally your last $5, you have very little risk when spending it on anything. The value of food to keep you alive for another day or two isn't actually that significant, whereas the possibility of winning enough money to pay for food, rent, clothing, and everything for a longer period of time is perhaps of larger value than just what the raw EV would indicate. (Assuming that you're not then an idiot with the money and blow it all... which is a big assumption.)

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Here's an interesting Freakonomics podcast on a no-lose lottery:

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/frea...-lose-lottery/

The basic premise is that there is also an earnings level that's "too small" to have any meaningful effect, but if those "too small" amounts are pooled together and given to just a single person, then it has the chance of doing actual good.

So rather than distributing a couple bucks to a bunch of people (in the form of interest or other return on investment), these dollars can be lumped together and turned into a moderate-sized lottery and the winner will have enough to do something useful/interesting/helpful instead of nobody being able to do anything with the money.

I'm pretty sure the "no lose lottery" comes up as a social construct in some immigrant circles. Basically a group of people will get together and pool their money to give each person a big opportunity (in turn, over time).

It's sociologically interesting because whether the first person succeeds or fails, they are expected to continue contributing to the pool.

The giant lottery payouts are less appealing than you might think because they draw so many lottery players, and the likelihood of having to share the top prize multi-way goes way up.

You can minimize this by choosing only numbers greater than 31, thereby avoiding collisions with other people's birthdays.