You are right, of course, about the difficulty with funding a home style cash game on the ship. But I was even offering to deal a one-table tourney using my plastic chips and a $20 buy-in. No takers. In hindsight, I should be glad.

Yep, if you don't mind paying a 5% commission for the advance. Or just bring cash. The staterooms have in-room safes.

Interestingly, on Carnival and Princess cruises you can fund your casino poker account from your credit card with zero fees. And, as That_Pope suggests, maybe that makes it easier for some folks to rebuy over and over again without feeling the pain in real-time.

I have been doing some research into poker cruises and I don't like the idea of the Electronic tables or having a hard time getting games started! My Girlfriend and I want to go on a cruise with a full functioning poker room with real dealers and chips and cards... I'm a tournament and cash game player. 1/3 - 2/5 NL... I think Card Player Cruises is the best based on my google searches and the reviews I've read. Considering their January 26th Cruise. It looks like it's just a $500 deposit to reserve a spot at this time. Anyone got any advice or experience?

This is the information I'm looking for too.

So, I spoke to Someone at Card Player Cruises.... Wish I could take the 1 cabin they have left on the May 13th Poker Cruise out of Galveston! Sounds Like a TON of FUN and 300 poker players onboard but I'm already committed to something else. Booked the Symphony of the Seas through them on the 26th of January, 2019.

RCCL and NCL both use live dealers on all their cruises. At least all I have been on. The dealers may not be very good but they are "real" as are the chips and cards. CCL uses electronic tables.

While I have not been on a Carp Player cruise, I prefer regular cruises. The games may be harder to get started, that has only been a real problem one time. And the games are SOOO much easier. Why go but heads with 300 players who play regularly AND pay more for the privilege?

This.

I like poker, but only when I feel I can win over time. I figure I would probably be just an average player on a Card Player poker cruise, meaning negative EV. On the regular cruise ship, however, I am almost always better than the average person at the table and so I routinely win $$.

I dealt two poker cruises for a different company, and while I understand why you might think the cruise is filled with skilled players .... My experience was that most players were recreational players and not particularly skilled.

7 years ago I went on NCL for a cruise and the rake was 10% up to $25, which killed the game after about 30 minutes on the first day. rest of the 10 day cruise no one played. But we did start a private game in the card room. (lucky)

from the sound of things, NCL hasnt changed their tune, and somehow still offer poker.

headed to an Alaska cruise later this year on the NCL Bliss. guess I'm doing something other than giving NCL $25 dollars each time i play a hand.

The play can be so bad that even with a 25$ rake the game is beatable. Can be high variance since you are going to be playing short stacks who will call with anything, but beatable

I read up on this thread before I sailed Norwegian Sky last weekend. It's only right that I contribute.

The cruise was a blast with a steady group of players every night of our three night cruise. It was an great mix of people and very friendly too.

Rake is a killer, as reported, so I was definitely influencing the table the last couple nights with straddles, re-straddles... led to a lot of fun pots. One LAG took me and my 88 pf for about $125 with 74o. It's a beatable game guys.

There were two tourneys- one was a satellite to their six figure prize pool tourney in November and a regular turbo. Never was around to see if those popped off.

Cruise Line: Norwegian Cruise Line
Ship's Name: Sky
Date of Cruise: June 8, 2018
Number of tables: 1
Live or e-table: Live
Blinds: 2/5
Buy-in structure: $100 min
Rake structure: 10% $25 cap
How often did the game run: Every night until they kicked us out

Princess Cruises is now offering (when outside the 3-mile limit) live $1/$2 NLHE. The table is located in a corner of their live shipboard casino.

No live dealer, just a flat touch-screen e-table top that is reminiscent of on-line poker but with your live opponents sitting around the table drinking.

Rake is 10% up to $8 but if the pot is (for example) really only $10 they only drop $1 - better than all the Southern California card rooms, that's for sure.

With no live dealer, there is no dealer to tip should we win a hand. There are no high-hand or bad-beat promotions, so there is no promotional drop, either.

Without offering (for now) any other observations and opinions, perhaps the distinguished participants in this fine forum who have played on this device might provide some of their own thoughts?

I'm a biased, yet raging advocate of the technology.

Playing live poker with human dealer, real cards and chips is still much better and will always be a better player experience for many reasons.

However these 2nd Generation e-tables coming to market are a nice improvement forward over the 1st generation.

Older etables using technology from 2006 and having 2D graphics and an individual computer/touch screen in front of each player, exacerbated all the problems with player experience.

2nd gen tables using 2018 technology like large format 4K LCDs, advanced mutli touch , high end graphics cards being driven by 3D Graphics gaming engines (like UE4 and Unity) is an improved gaming experience.

Which still fails to address 5he game protection issues from not having a dealer present.

Lou, or anyone else who knows: how widespread are the larger next-generation e-tables like the one in the photo? Is that the Jackpot Blitz product with the Carnival logo on it? I'm curious whether Carnival or others have installed these broadly across their fleet (as opposed to the older tables). Would love to hear more reports on where these are installed.

Not wanting to get into what has been hashed ad nauseam in other threads.

Like I said above, live poker will always be better on traditional tables vs etables for several reasons. Reason #3 or 4 is what you mention.

New tables are in very early stages of deployment with maybe only 5-10 operating in the market.

The pic is not the Jackpot table, its a competitive product.

Cruise lines are only beginning to test the 2nd gen tables to replace older PokerPro tables that have been operating on some cruise lines for 10+ years.

Pic above is from Carnival Fantasy so can say with certainty one is installed there. I can't give first hand info of any other installations, but I would suspect more ships will be upgraded in the near future.

Regarding these tables in land based live poker rooms, without some specific circumstances, though improved product / experience, I would suspect they would still struggle in the same way 1st Gen tables did.

That's some bs rake. And they arrested loan sharks for charging 10% vig. smh

I believe the new Jackpot etables have been installed on the West Coast Princess and Carnival ships. I played on the Jackpot table earlier this month on both the Carnival Splendor and the Carnival Imagination, based out of Los Angeles.

The Jackpot table has issues. For example, the table touch screen is difficult to work with. You can't tap with the corner of your room card like you could on the older PokerPro etable, and all of us players at one time or another had problems figuring out how much finger pressure to use -- and even where to put your finger as there is a bit of parallax due to the depth of the transparent surface. On the Jackpot table it is also more difficult than on the PokerPro to screen your cards from the other players, so much so that I had to tell some players more than once that I had seen one or both of their hole cards (OK, some people will think this is an advantage, but I play a friendly game and did not like this flaw). I hope they can fix these issues.

Cruise Line: Celebrity
Ship's Name: Infinity
Date of Cruise: November 24th - 29th, 2018
Length of Cruise: 5 days, (FLL - Cozumel - Key West - FLL)

Number of tables: one

Live or e-table: Live

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

Tourneys
Cost: $60 ($50 + $10)
Structure: Turbo. Ten-minute levels starting at 50/100 blinds.
How often did tourneys run: Only on the two sea days, but multiple times each of those afternoons.

Interestingly, I was on Celebrity Millennium in Asia earlier this year (scroll up for my post), and that ship used an E-table (Lightning Poker) rather than a live dealer, so the decision to have a live dealer or an E-table definitely is not made on a fleetwide basis.

I'll be taking a 10-day Southern Caribbean cruise on MSC over Christmas and will report back on the poker situation on that ship. Although I've sailed on most mainstream lines over the past 40 years, this will be my first cruise on MSC.

Thanks for update. providing responsive multi touch on a 70"+ LCD is a non-trivial technical problem.

Also you are spot on about parallax.

Jackpot table is on ~6 ships ( I think)

Competitive product from 52 Gaming is a brand new product in market and recently installed on Carnival Liberty, Fantasy and Pride.

The rest of fleet still has PokerPro tables (8-12 years old) which are all in process of being replaced.

You can easily tell which table is which. Jackpot table is 10-seated. 52 Gaming is 8-Seated.

Would love to hear any feedback on quality / performance of touch interface from anyone playing on 52 Gaming Table. Biased opinion, but I think they solved the technical problems with large size multi-touch. They also have an interesting small piece of acrylic over hole cards that solves problem of players seeing other players hole cards (due to parallax issue you mentioned).

The reality is that even on ships that use a live dealer there is still a game protection issue. This is true because those dealers do not deal enough poker really understand game protection. The biggest issue on PPro tables is uncontrolled table talk and friendly collusion. But plenty of that still happens with a live dealer. Often the dealers trying to keep the table mode light even join in on the inappropriate table talk without even knowing it is inappropriate.

Often there mechanics are even worse. I was on a RCL ship recently with one particular dealer who continually flashed cards because he had no clue how or why to keep the cards parallel to the table while dealing. Even worse, I mentioned to him what he was doing (privately after one of his downs) and he expressed no concern over this nor appeared to make any effort to improve.

I cruised MSC once. Never again. MSC is an Italian cargo shipping company that is trying to expand into the cruising market. Unfortunately, when I sailed with them MSC was treating people like cargo. Maybe things are better now. Didn't try the poker on my MSC cruise.

I think you're confusing MSC Cruises with its parent company, Mediterranean Shipping Company (Also MSC). MSC Cruises has been in the cruising business for decades and is the 4th largest cruise company in the world. What's relatively recent is their expansion into the North American cruise market.

I don't know how long ago you cruised with them, but I've read plenty of horror stories myself on Cruise Critic about their lack of customer service when they first entered this market several years ago, but they allegedly went through a culture shift/operational change and things have supposedly improved greatly in that area. I guess I'll find out for myself in a couple of weeks.

I took an MSC cruise in the Mediterranean last year. It was great and I would be happy to do so again. It wasn't that much different than a cruise in the Caribbean. The biggest difference was that all announcements were done in 6 languages, but we got used to that quickly. There were some other minor differences, but they were inconsequential.

I have heard that they have Americanized the experience in the Caribbean. I doubt you would have any issues. Just go and have fun.

To bring it back on topic, they could never get a poker game going in the Mediterranean cruise I took. There wasn't much in the way of blackjack either. The euros mainly played roulette.