[jamby]

This is a trip report from attending a 4-day Western Caribbean poker cruise on Carnival Ecstacy sponsored by the Players Cruise group. This was their 12th cruise. It was my first cruise.

I just returned yesterday - a day later than expected. It was quite a trip. The cruise itself left a lot to be desired. I felt often that I was in the middle of a Jerry Springer audience and/or a bunch of idiots on spring break. I have found out now that Carnival is known for this kind of behavior from passengers since they're cheaper to cruise with than others. The poker was outstanding though. Over 200 players cruised with the group and our poker room was opened up to the cruise passengers at large so it was pretty fishy - especially if you played smart and waited for your moments to make a move. I had three way up days out of the four so am pretty happy. We played all no-limit, both $1/3 cash and multi/single table tourneys. There were also $2/4 limit crazy pineapple games offered, but I didn't play that.

The room we had was next to the ship disco, which made for a lot of loud bass thumping vibrations at night and people also cutting through to get to the restrooms. It was a minor annoyance at most. I believe we had 7 tables in all setup for action. Copags were in use throughout. The cash game chips were nice custom Chipcos. The tourney chips were customized plastic dice-equivalents. The dealers were all professionals.

There was also a casino on board the ship, but I didn't venture there at all except to walk through once in order to report back here. The poker game there was one of those new all-electronic NLHE machines with no dealer, chips, cards. Yuck. One craps table, several blackjack tables, 3-card poker and lots of slot machines.

My tourney results were just not all that great and most of my good fortune came in cash games. Here's how the poker went down for me on a day-by-day basis.

10/11
Set sail (no sails really, but I think that's what they call it) at 4:00 PM from Galveston.
Started out on day one with a $40 NL SNG - finished 3rd and earned $63
Played another $40 SNG - finished 1st - made $140
Played $1/3 NL cash from 10pm - 4am on 10/12 - finished up $590. It was a grind, but a good day overall.

10/12
Got about 5 hours sleep, showered, ingested some quick coffee and breakfast and was back in the poker room by 10:30 am - 1/2 hour after it opened.
Played an $80 multi-table tourney - finished 9th - out of the money as it paid the top 7 finishers. I believe there were 36 entrants.
Played more $1/3 NL cash from 1:30 - 5pm and finished down $145.
Took a break for dinner and hit the $1/3 tables again from 7pm - 4:30 am on
10/13 - finished down $86.
Day #2 was a disappointing day for sure.

10/13
This was the one day of the cruise that we stopped at a port. Ours was Cozumel island in Mexico. It was outstanding. I paid for a snorkeling excursion in advance and definitely picked a winner. The water in Cozumel is crystal clear and the locals are really awesome people. After the snorkeling I found a great little restaurant right on the ocean and had the best guacamole ever made with a mortar and pestle table side. It was extraordinary. So were the margaritas. An utterly outstanding day in Cozumel and I found some nice handmade gifts to take home to family and friends too. I could see me living in a place like Cozumel. It was really special.

Back on the boat and took a nap as we were late departing so the poker room couldn't open until we were back on our way. Apparently somebody important didn't make it back on the ship in time and we were waiting for them. I was told this just isn't usually done so am guessing it was a V.I.P. of some sort.

Poker Room opened up and I played $1/3 NL cash from 6-7pm and finished down $48.
Then played the $60 'Ladies' multi-table tourney with 28 entrants. Got knocked out early on a pretty bad beat when my AKs got whipped on the river by A6o. Decided to buy back in for another $60. All the multi-table events had what were known as ghost seats for any unsold seats. Stacks were placed at the unsold seats and got blinded off. Within the first hour a new player entering or a player knocked out could buy back in and take a blinded-off stack for another entry fee. This is what I did for an add'l $60. I wound up finishing 4th - just in the money and made $72.
Played more $1/3 cash from 9:30-11pm and finished up $112.
Took a breather for a late night dinner at the Mexican buffet. It was terrible food, but needed the sustenance.
Played more $1/3 cash from midnight - 3:30 am on 10/14 - finished up $117.

10/14
Played $1/3 NL cash from 10:30 - noon - finished down $42.
Played another $80 multi-table tourney and finished 11th on the final table bubble and again out of the money.
Played $1/3 NL cash from 2-5:30pm and finished up a whopping $1. That was pretty funny. I don't think I've ever had such an even session.
Took a break for another bad dinner. This one was Chateaubriand and it tasted more like overcooked pot roast. Again - it was sustenance though.
Played more $1/3 NL cash then from 6pm - midnight and finished up $762.

All earnings are post-tip. For the tourneys 20% was taken off the top. 10% for the house and 10% for the dealers. For the cash games 10% or up to $6 plus $1 was taken as rake out of every hand. The 10%/$6 was rake and the $1 was for a free cruise that was raffled off. These seemed like pretty substantial rakes to me. I'm no expert though. The dealers were pretty decent for the most part and I tipped accordingly at the cash games - even when just picking up the blinds.

The best part of the trip for me - aside from meeting our very own miandsh200 and his friends he travelled with - was that I learned some things about my game that I think need some serious fixing. I realized a couple of what I think are very important holes in my game. Epiphany moments if you will. Not sure how I zoned for so long and didn't figure this out earlier since they're both pretty basic. Anyway, I often fail to bet big enough pre-flop to protect my would-be winning hands against too many calling/limping opponents and I also fail to stand by my non-nuts winners against big bets or re-raises - both pre and post flop.

The cruise though was for the birds. As I mentioned above, the food was just terrible and so was the service for the most part. The cabin was a downer too. I wish that I had spent more for a larger and less claustrophobic stateroom. The ride was horrible and choppy and we later learned that was because there was a failure of one of the generators that caused a subsequent failure to the propulsion system. As a result we travelled back from Cozumel at much less than normal speed and arrived home very late on Monday - about 8 hours late. This of course caused missed connections, etc. Texas was also experiencing their worst storm of the season, which also impacted travel. My 3:20 PM departure turned into a 7:30 AM departure the following morning. That included spending the night in the Houston airport with some very creepy folks and two evacuation fire alarms - apparently false ones.

It was an event getting home, that's for sure. However, I met some awesome people and will definitely do this again. I also think that the Players Cruise folks run a decent floating card room and they're really nice folks too. I'm thinking of pursuing one of their cruises in the future for a ChipTalk floating meetup. I'm told that 1/2 their 2008 cruise will be on Royal Caribbean, which I'm told is a better cruise line.

-jamby