WEST PALM BEACH — When Charles Infantolino drew a losing hand in a game of seven-card stud Sunday, he won a record poker jackpot at the Palm Beach Kennel Club.
Infantolino's losing hand of four queens won him $116,700 in an upside-down payout called the "bad beat."
The jackpot is claimed when a player draws an almost unbeatable hand, then loses to an even better one.
Everyone at the table wins in a bad beat, but the runner-up is the luckiest. The "loser" wins half the jackpot, the "winner" takes a quarter and the other players divide the rest.
Nobody had been able to claim the bad beat jackpot at the kennel club in almost two months, and the jackpot swelled to $233,400.
Managers at the kennel club believe that is the highest ever in a poker room at Florida's regulated dog and horse tracks.
Many players had been hoping to win for weeks. Infantolino, 64, said he knew they had the jackpot when a woman at his table, Tasha Johnson, laid out her hand - the ace, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of spades.
"I said to myself, 'I got the four queens. She's got the straight flush. We've got the bad beat.''"
All the players at the table yelled, then jumped out of their seats, card room manager Jonathon Miller said.
Security quickly surrounded the table, and more than 300 players in the room applauded.
Footage of the cards from overhead cameras confirmed the win, Miller said.
Johnson, 29, of Riviera Beach won $58,350. She has played poker for six years, she said, but had never won more than $500.
She called her mom, who was speechless.
She is thinking about putting a down payment on a house. But first, she said, "me and the girls are going to go out."
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