Atlantic City Weekly

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It’s always a little “iffy” to write about bad-beat jackpot totals with my early deadline for a Thursday paper, but chances are pretty good that right now that there is a new record for a bad-beat jackpot total in Atlantic City.

As of Tuesday, the Caesars Entertainment combined bad-beat jackpot was at $668,770. The record, unofficially, is a $672,115 jackpot paid out at the Taj Mahal in June 2010.

Barring a hit, a new record should be set before the weekend.

Online Update: The record was set Wednesday, July 25 as the combined jackpot climbed to $672,574

Of course back in 2010, the Taj jackpot paid only one table’s worth of players. The winner, John Bazela, of King of Prussia, Pa., won $336,057.

The Caesars bad beat would pay out 30 percent to the bad-beat winner, 20 percent to the hand winner and 50 percent divided between players in all Caesars rooms — Harrah’s Resort, Bally’s, Showboat and Caesars — when it hits.

Since Caesars first introduced the combined jackpot in 2010 (just a couple of months after the record was set), the company has been hoping to set a new jackpot record. Their jackpot starts with a high minimum of four queens, but drops a notch each week. It’s now down to at least quad threes.

It’s not too hard to figure out why Caesars did it that way. Bad-beat jackpots in the stratosphere pack city poker rooms and since this one pays players in four rooms, well, you do the math.

It only took about two years of trying, but Caesars is finally there.

Changing the subject, last week we told you about Ryan Eriquezzo, of Danbury, Conn., who parlayed a $161,000 win at the World Series of Poker Circuit stop at Caesars Atlantic City in March (plus a few other circuit cashes) into a seat at the circuit championships. That led to his winning the championship and $416,000.

That’s a huge plug for Atlantic City’s two WSOP Circuit stops — at Harrah’s Resort in December and Caesars in March — not to mention for Eriquezzo.

And it capped a successful year for the WSOP Circuit, which hasn’t always thrived, but this season saw large increases in attendance and prize pools.

So for the 2012-13 season, the circuit is expanding and adding four new stops, bringing the total number to 20. One of those new stops, at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, begins in late March and could potentially attract a lot of regular A.C. players. The March Caesars stop gets pushed up a little and runs Feb. 28 to March 11. The Foxwoods stop starts March 27.

There’s a stop in Cleveland between the two, but still, it’s a nice early spring double header for local players.

The Harrah’s Resort stop will be held Nov. 29 to Dec. 10.

A “stop” by the way, is a 12-tournament event (with some secondary tournaments) that includes a $1,500 championship tournament.

Also, the national championship, which is a $10 million freeroll based on player standings during the circuit events, has been moved from Las Vegas to Harrah’s New Orleans.

The WSOP circuit gets some of its best draws in Atlantic City and, at the moment, provides the only organized tournament competition to Borgata and its seasonal poker opens.

In the season just finished, both Caesars and Harrah’s saw some high turnouts bettering 600 players for both their opening events and their championship events respectively.