It’s another normal weekend in Atlantic City for tournament action, which is probably just fine with the folks at The Tropicana, who are seeing their bad beat jackpot head into uncharted waters.

Well, for them anyway.

Michelle Orpe

The Trop bad beat is at $399,000, just about ready to break the $400K mark. We don’t know officially, but that seems to be a new record for the casino.

The jackpot picked up about $20,000 since last Friday. Remember, the Trop’s 40-table room also holds tournaments, so that’s not bad for the action they usually see.

Still, it may not quite be bad beat mania yet, but it’s getting there.

The Harrah’s combined bad beat jackpot is next in the city at $341,475, followed by the Borgata, which saw a small bad beat hit early in the week leaving the total bad beat jackpot is at $281,429.

And the Taj Mahal seems to have had another hit this week, probably for about $140K,  and is down to $28,183.

They’re predicting another hot weekend on the beaches grinders. It’s a good time to hit the sand and the tables.

The Borgata is being a little tight-lipped about it’s new bad beat system, but the move is obviously designed to create some bad beat hysteria on par with what happened at the Taj Mahal in June when the bad beat hit for a record $672,115.

Basically, the Borgata will now have a high bad beat jackpot and a low bad beat jackpot

The high jackpot only kicks in when four 10s or better falls to a higher hand. The low jackpot covers four deuces to nines.

It goes without saying that the high jackpot won’t hit very often and should build up to some impressive totals.

Ironically, under the old system of one jackpot with four deuces as the minimum, the Borgata’s bad beat has hit three times in about as many weeks. That kind of proves the casino’s point.

Payouts of the Bad Beat Jackpot are as follows:

• 40% of the Bad Beat Jackpot will be awarded to the Bad Beat hand (losing hand)

• 20% of the Bad Beat Jackpot will be awarded to the winner of the hand

• 40% of the Bad Beat Jackpot will be awarded equally among the balance of the seated players on the game who received cards at the beginning of the hand.

We’re not exactly sure how the rake on this breaks down, but we’ll keep digging.

The high jackpot was at just over $113,000 with the low jackpot at $28,000 as of Friday.

Meanwhile Bally’s bad beat jackpot remains the highest in the city at $388,000.

Bally’s offers a unique split of 30 percent to the bad beat winner (or loser of the hand), 20 percent to the hand winner and the remaining 50 percent split between all players in the room, not just at the table where the bad beat happens.

With no special tournament action on tap this weekend in Atlantic City, it’s usually time to run down the highest bad beat jackpots in the city.

But The Borgata’s bad beat won’t make the list this weekend as it hit for about $225,000 Thursday night in $1/$2 No Limit game.

The losing hand, or bad beat winner, was quad 10s, held by Joseph McTamney of Holland Pa. He wins $89,796. The winner of the hand, with a straight flush, is Robin Willms of Valrico Fla. He gets $44,899. The remaining eight players at the table take home $11,225.

It’s the 54^th bad beat jackpot to hit at the Borgata, which have paid out a combined total of more than $7.1 million.

So the highest bad beat in the city remains at Bally’s, which has now climbed to $344,000.  The jackpot has climbed slowly, adding about $10,000 a week for the last month in the 20-table room.

Bally’s offers a unique split of 30 percent to the bad beat winner (or loser of the hand), 20 percent to the hand winner and the remaining 50 percent split between all players in the room, not just at the table where the bad beat happens.

July 4^th weekend in Atlantic City is about fireworks, the beach and nightclubs. So while regular tournament action will be underway in the city’s poker rooms, no special events are planned.

Bally's poker room

However, Bally’s bad beat has climbed to $317,000, so the 20-table room should be pretty full throughout the weekend. Bally’s offers a unique split of 30 percent to the bad beat winner (or loser of the hand), 20 percent to the hand winner and the remaining 50 percent split between all players in the room, not just at the table where the bad beat happens.

But we can’t just leave you with that, so here are some tidbits from the poker world to tide you over through the holiday.

• Today, July 2, starts the last preliminary tournament of the World Series of Poker before the main event gets underway Monday (Day 1 is spread over four days). The event is a $2,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament. Of course, some other events still have to wrap up, including the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha World Championship, which started Thursday.

Carbon Poker's Elizabeth

• Mike Matusow leads the WSOP tournament of Champions, which resumes play Saturday, July 3. The pros have been playing this tournament tight and 17 players are still in the mix. That’s a little more than expected, and the tournament simply has to end July 4 so as not to interfere with the main event. Could be a long weekend for the pros.

By the way, right in the middle of the pack are Annie Duke and Phil Helmuth, both of whom recently put on an exhibition for Good Morning America at Harrah’s Atlantic City. Hey, we work the A.C. angle wherever possible.

• Actress and poker player Shannon Elizabeth has signed on with Carbon Poker as a sponsored pro. Elizabeth, of American Pie fame, has made some A.C. appearances in the past, but really, we just like to post her picture.