One Lucky Player In Poker Heaven After Cracked Quad 8's Earns Him €210,000

In Texas Hold em, the odds of being dealt 4 of a kind are one in 4,165 and when you consider the only hands that can beat it are a higher 4 of a kind, a straight flush at one in 72,192, and a Royal Flush at one in 649,739, having been dealt this hand you would be forgiven for thinking you were way ahead of your opponent.
However, the game of poker is full of surprises and for one player bad luck soon turned to good after playing on a €0.50/€1 No Limit table on Poker Heaven and finding his four eights had been run over by four queens.
Lionel Foulquier from France had only joined ‘Poker Heaven’ a few months earlier when the hand occurred and although aware that a bad beat jackpot existed on the site, he wasn’t completely sure of the exact requirements. As he explains:
“I was aware that the jackpot was standing at over €600,000, but to be honest I didn’t think I stood any chance of winning it. When my quad 8s were beaten I immediately left the table to see if I had won, and when I realized I had, I spoke to a friend of mine to tell him that I had just won over €200,000, and at that point we were both left speechless.”
The Poker Heaven Bad Beat Jackpot is progressive, meaning that the total prize fund keeps rising until someone wins it, and as long as the losing player is holding at least four sixes with four players in the game everyone gets a share of the jackpot. In this instance 35% went to the loser, and 17.5% to the winner and remaining players, while administration and re-seeding costs accounted for the rest.
The upshot of it all meant Foulquier received €210,000, the winner of the hand, ‘o1nfl1p’ got €105,254 and the rest of the lucky bystanders awarded €15,036 each. Commenting on the remarkable bit of fortune, Foulquier said:
“The atmosphere at the table when all the players realized we had won the Bad Beat Jackpot was amazing. As to what to do next, I am planning to buy an apartment with some of the winnings and of course I intend to play a lot more poker!”