The squeaky wheel gets the grease at the Palms (non-grumpy content)

I was waiting for my turn at the table at the Palms today when a series of unusually surprised and enthusiastic uproars came from a nearby table. I stepped over to see what had happened. It was A-A versus 10-10. I don't know how the betting went down, because it was all over by the time I joined the commotion. But it was obvious from how fast the last two cards came that they got it all in after the flop, if not before. Anyway, the underdog had caught a 10 on the flop for a set, then the aces made their own set on the turn. But the biggest explosion from the players had come when the underdog hit his one-outer for quad tens on the river.

Then the controversy came up. The Palms had had a bad-beat jackpot, a promotion that ended five days ago. A sign on the wall said something like "We no longer have a bad-beat jackpot. The money that was collected will be redistributed through another exciting promotion to be announced soon." Four of a kind beating aces full of tens would have qualified for the jackpot, were the promotion still running.

For the next hour or so, the guy who had lost (and subsequently stopped playing) kept coming in to the room and talking to the other people who had been at the table, including Mr. Quads. He was saying that he was going to talk to everybody in the casino management that he could, in an effort to get them to give them the jackpot money. He was trying to enlist the support of the other players, because the jackpot distribution would have given a share to everybody at the table.

I was kind of annoyed at having to hear this guy tell his loser story over and over and over again, and repeat over and over and over again how unfair it was that they had ended the promotion without giving away the money they had collected, etc. I was too polite to say it, but I was thinking, "Fat chance, buddy. They ended the promotion, and that's that. No way you're going to pry that money out of them. They're going to use it to seed something else, period."

To my great surprise, the Palms proved me wrong. Eventually, the poker room shift manager came to the table with an announcement: She had gotten approval to distribute the money in the jackpot fund just as if the promotion were still running. It took well over an hour for all the paperwork and accounting to get done, but the loser of the hand walked away with over $4000; Mr. Quads got about $2300 (though he sadly had to relinquish the $82 he had received as a high-hand bonus!), and the other people who had been at the table each got $411.

I guess it does pay to make a little noise! If it had been me, I probably would have just shrugged my shoulders at the double bad luck (losing the hand plus just missing the bad-beat payout) and walked away, assuming that nothing more could or would be done about it.

Incidentally, this was my first time playing at the Palms. I not only had a highly profitable session (up $543 in less than 3 hours), but found it an enjoyable, comfortable place to play. I expect I'll be making it a more frequent stop in my gallavanting around. I also got to meet Murph, a poker dealer whose blog I have perused and enjoyed from time to time (http://murph4qs.blogspot.com/). I found it through the blog of a Flamingo poker dealer who I have gotten to know a bit through his frequent play at the Hilton (see http://pkrdlr.blogspot.com/).