Been on lots of cruises on CCL and NCL but mostly RCL. Cant help but to notice the last few cruises (id say the last 2-3 years) the poker action was slim to non existent. the free cruise tournament used to always no problem getting players. It wasn't unusual to be left out if you didn't sign up early enough. same with the cash games. plenty of players with a wait list wanting to get in.
IMO 2 things really screwed things up: cash games went from 1/2 to 2/5 when combined with the rake makes it a losing affair unless you stack the whole table. most people playing on cruises are barely rec players and are just having fun on the ship. that setup wont keep people interested or even wanting to play. as far as the tournament obviously the structure is terrible and geared to encourage add ons and rebuys with the small starting stack and quick blinds. if im not mistaken they used to be $100 buy in and $50 rebuys for the first 4 or 6 levels then $50 optional add on. now its $100 buy in and rebuys, $50 for the add on. not really encouraging to keep firing bullets. also it used to be a shootout style where each night the top 1 or 2 (depending how many played) move on to the final table. now its just 1 and instead of starting with even stacks you carry over what you finished with to the final table. so unless youre table had a lot of action with rebuys even if you advanced you could possibly be at a huge disadvantage.
didn't know if someone decided they weren't taking in enough money in poker so they decided to do this but now they are making much less with those changes.

Wondering if point of departure will effect the amount of players much ?
Going out of New Jersey/New York in the spring time.
Hoping I can find 1/2 or 2/5 nl cash games most afternoons and nights ?

I mean do they struggle to find 8 or 9 players most of the time ? I am hoping not.

Your are speaking of Royal only I assume ?

Carnival is $1/2 and has regular games going on lots of ships.

Yes Royal.
I am talking about live games not machines.
Dont know about the 2/5 thing but i heard its sorta moot as most people are only buying in for 200 or 300 even though its 2/5. (That works as i am not looking for a table full of 50 and 100 stacks.)
Again just wondering it tables of 7 to 10 players is all that regular... I wont even play 4 or 5 handed.

been a while since ive been on carnival and only been on glory and fantasy. they both had electronic tables and at the time they were 1/2. fantasy was usually pretty busy. glory while going out of Norfolk had decent traffic.

the time of year and length of the trip can possibly affect what kind of action youll see on a ship. 5-7 days with a good amount of sea days seems to be the best. 7+ days usually gets an older crowd that may or may not be interested. 5 or less is younger with the same issue or people just doing other stuff with the limited time.

Hi,
Would like any news or advice regarding poker cruises.
The on that caught my interest was a poker cruise to Cuba this summer.
any information would be appreciated.

I am a 1-2 2-5 NLH player.

Thanks.
P. Ross

I could talk about cruising and poker all day.

If you've never been on a cruise, poker or no poker, it is simply the best, most pampered, relaxing vacation there is, bar none.

A poker cruise is just a regular cruise plus a private poker room.

I am a big fan of Card Player Cruises, with whom I cruise about once a year.

I've also heard good things about Ante Up cruises but can't comment on them personally.

The WPT has a cruise as well, and I'm sure there are others.

Anything specific you'd like to know?

Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship: Inspiration
Date of Cruise: Jan/February, 2018
Cruise: Four night out of LA to Mexico
Number of Tables: One dealing 1/2 NL
Live or Etable: Etable
Rake: 15% to Max of $10

Have taken this cruise several times. On average, the players on this ship are the worst I have ever seen in a casino. You have some decent players, but you also have some drunk young guys, some older guys who speak accented English and may not even understand the Poker hand orders, and some super tight, passive female calling stations. So even though the rake is way too high, you can more than compensate by playing standard TAG and not trying big bluffs. Even though I got stupid and on two occasions tried a big bluff unsuccessfully (once getting called down on the last two streets by a player with ace high and no draw, jesus), I still came out $420 ahead for the cruise after maybe 12 to 15 hours of total playing time.

Interestingly, this ship has a new kind of e-table from a manufacturer called Philips. The casino host said Carnival is in the slow process of replacing the older PokerPro tables. I guess we all prefer what we know (in my case, the PokerPro) over what we don’t, but getting used to the newer Philips table was easy. One of the bad things about the newer table, though, is that it is more difficult to screen your cards from other players, and I had to tell some of the other players to hide their cards better. Not sure what the etiquette of exposing cards is, but my wife says its good karma to let the fish know you can see their cards sometimes and they need to hide them better.

And here is a tip about how to get a game going when you see the electronic table but no one is playing. Get your wife or significant other, open separate poker accounts at the table (easy to do), and start playing each other heads up. The Carnival machine takes no rake when there are only two players, so you can play for free. In fact, you can even play really stupidly. Other guys in the casino will wander over, see a fun, seemingly uninformed poker table, and they will sit down to play. Your significant other can then leave (if he/she is not really into poker . . . .), and the REAL game can commence. Works pretty well to get a game going.

Good advice to start a game. Unfortunately my wife doesn't do poker at all and would have no interest in it.

I found myself sitting alone at the table on some cruises trying to get a game started at the non scheduled times. Had no problem getting a game when it said in the itinerary that cash game poker starts at 7pm or whatever.

For some reason, it was only on the first night of my most recent cruise that the ship's itinerary had a "Hold Em Players Meet" entry. The other days and nights there was no mention of poker, even when the casino was open. And, on previous cruises, I used to sit at the table and wait for someone to join me, but often I would wait 30 to 40 minutes and no one would sit down. One time, a young guy with a lot of Bling came by and looked at me for a few moments and then said, "Nah, you look like a poker player" and walked on. But when I sit down and play my wife heads up, and we (by previous agreement) limp and check every hand down to the river, other players always show up. And my wife then leaves, as, although she can sort of play poker, she is scared to death of NL cash games and will not play with strangers.

Playing heads up with wife has been effective. But literally I have never seen the "Hold Em Players Meet" entry achieve anything, waste of ink at best.

I took the Ante Up Poker cruise in December on Royal. It was the one you may have heard about that had the noro-virus outbreak. We ran a promotion in our local room and gave out 10 cruise packages. As a floor I was granted a bonus cabin as well, with no official duties. It was a vacation for my wife and I.

The virus and the weather (rained both port days) obviously sucked, but it had nothing to do with the poker. They used a conference room on Deck 2 of the ship, so it was very private as most cruisers would not go to that level. Mostly 1-3 NL, some Omaha Hi/Lo, and tournaments every day. It was a very laid back and fun atmosphere, and many of the players knew each other well from taking these Ante Up cruises multiple times. The dealers were solid and fun, although at times they were quite overworked. It's not like you can call another one in on a busy night!

You sure deck 2? On every Royal I have sailed 2 is all guest rooms. I have never seen a conf room on2. Maybe 3?

Positive.

Cruise Line: Celebrity
Ship's Name: Millennium

Date of Cruise: Feb 18th - March 4th, 2018
Length of Cruise: 14 days, Singapore to Hong Kong

Number of tables: one

Live or e-table: E-table (Lightning Poker)

Cash
Blinds: $1-$2NL
Buy-in structure: $50 - $200
Rake structure: 10%, $15 max
How often did the game run: Daily. (Usually just in the evenings.)

Tourneys
Cost: $60 ($50 + $10)
Structure: Turbo. Ten-minute levels starting at 50/100 blinds.
How often did tourney run: Scheduled for 1:00pm, 2:30pm, 4:00pm every sea day; however hasn't always run. For example, a cash game started shortly after noon today, and most of the players wanted to continue playing cash rather than switching to a tournament format this afternoon.

What was the rake like?

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Sailing on Celebrity Reflection next month. Anyone here know if they have live poker or e-poker (and which e-tables) on this ship?

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Live dealer. $60 Super turbo (1hr) tourneys on sea days, pay top 2. $2/$5 nl cash ($200min/$500max).

It’s a fantastic ship.

Don't know if this is new, but their website says they have 2 Lightning Poker e-tables, and deck plans show 2 poker tables of some sort. Perhaps the tourneys are dealt live? Will share what I observe onboard.

My info may be old. I was on her about two or three years ago. GL

Just got back from a Royal Caribbean crusie on Voyager of the Seas from Sydney Aus 2 weeks through Vanuatu and Fiji.

They had a $60 tournament every sea day with $40 rebuys and an addon. They took 25% of the buyins and rebuys though as rake so I only played in the 1 which I won. Super fast structure as well 10 min levels and big blind jumps. There were 6 people only in the one I won which was like the 3rd day but had heard they got like 14 people to one of the earlier ones.

Every night there was 1 $1/$2 NLHE live dealer table opened at 10pm until casino close at 2am. $50 min buy in no max buy in and rake was 10% on all pots with NO CAP.

So yeah overall crappy structures so I didn't play too much. But I hadn't played proper poker in like 5 -6 years (black friday spooked me off online poker when I almost lost my entire bankroll on fulltilt) and now have the bug to get bakc grinding again.

I was in that tourney on day 1 or 2, there were at least 18 people in it. Can confirm that the structure was atrocious but I think you look at it as a $300 buy in and max out your rebuys it could work because the opposition was subpar. Anyway I ran like ass and decided not to play any more, can’t really justify the bankroll hit.

I did not go to the cash game because I was reliably in the bag before 8pm every night but if it ran during the day I’d definitely have given it a shot. My guess is the other players would be the people playing the tourney so basically the same or worse standard than people playing cash in the Star in Sydney.

Cruise Line: Princess
Ship: Grand Princess
Date of Cruise: April 7, 2018
Cruise: Seven nights RT out of San Francisco to Ensenada
Number of Tables: One dealing 1/2 NL
Live or Etable: Etable (PokerPro)
Rake: 15% to Max of $8

On this cruise there were 12 or 13 folks who played regularly, and thus the table was full, or mostly full, every evening and on the two non-port days. Surprisingly, almost half the players were women. And the players were uniformly soft: only two players were even moderately aggressive preflop, while the remainder were very loose and passive. In fact, it was not unusual to see seven or eight limpers to the flop without a raise (. . . when I was not in the hand). Between this poor play and the high rake, several of these players must have lost hundreds of dollars. Toward the end of the cruise I even tried to convince the table to switch with me from the casino to a self-dealt, no-rake home game, but no one wanted to do it. Hmm, did they even care about their continuing donations to the house?? Guess not. Well, that’s OK, as my straightforward TAG play (while being careful to have the aggressive players on my right and with almost zero postflop bluffing) netted me about $450 over the course of the cruise. Gotta love the cruise ships. Oh, and there were no tourneys in the casino, only the cash game.

On board Reflection now, and admranger had it right: no electronic tables. Sea days include 3 $60 sit-n-go turbo tourneys paying 2 places, and in the evenings they offer live-dealer 10-handed 2-5NL (200-500 buy-in) with a 10% rake up to USD $15. Dealers report that there hasn't regularly been a waitlist in the Caribbean, but we've had a full table and waitlist each night on this transatlantic cruise.

Most players don't have that cash on them to play in a room. That is the best thing about cruise poker, people can play on credit from their cruise card.