I thought this thread would be about the cardplayer or ante up poker cruises. No info on those?

I think it would pretty cool to take one of these trips.

Thinking about taking a 14 day cruise to hawaii on the Golden Princess. In the casino it says they spread blackjack, let it ride, roullete, craps, and texas hold em. I'm not sure if they mean the table game, or poker.

Anyone taken this cruise and have any input? Thanks!

got back yesterday from a 4 night cruise on Royal's Liberty of the Seas from Ft Lauderdale to Cozumel. First off, great ship, value, shows, food, cruise etc...
****** As for the poker/casino it had one electronic table, "Lightning Poker". I've heard of/played on Pokertek and Poker Pro, so this one was new to me. It was incredibly poorly designed/programmed compared to pokerpro tables I've played on Carnival ships and at Harrahs's Cherokee. More about this at the end if you're interested.
****** The play, of course, was comical at times. If you're reading this then I assume you know how to play pretty well compared to the general population. With that in mind, you should have little problem at least breaking even, even with the ridiculous rake of 10% with a 10$ cap on this 1/2 nl table. For comparison, I think the rake on Carnival was 6 max. Also, if there were 4 or less players on Carnival, no rake. Two players on Royal generates a rake as long as a flop is seen. The reason this sucks is that when my wife and I were on a Carnival cruise and the table was dead, we'd sit down and play each other waiting for people passing to get curious and join in. That can't be done on this machine unless we fold blinds back and forth. With that said, this cruise did have a busier poker table than others during the night.
****** Every cruise I've been on had at least one or two crazy foreigners giving money away, as did this one. One guy to my right, I think from Israel, couldn't understand why his A4 had to split the pot with another guy having A3. There were a few guys playing with their wives (me included) just for a good time, slowly giving their money away. People were betting $2 into $50 pots, getting min raised to $4 at times on those pots. On one hand I was able to get an extra $23 by shoving on the end with top two. The guy called me with his 8 high after his gutshot missed (you're able to see the hands of callers after the hand if you want). I could go on.
***** People usually bought in for either $50 or $100 max. I always bought in for $200, except one time when the machine wouldn't accept my other $100 bills (I'll explain more on this at end). Buying in for only $100 was getting me pissed at the machine, but I was able to turn that $100 into $889 by the end of the night (4 hours or so).
****** Overall, I won just over 1k, averaging about 5 hours a night. I also entered one of their satellite tournies for $100 to try to win a seat in the Sunday tournament. Winner of that was to get a free trip on Oasis of the Seas in December and a seat in their 100k tourney with 50k (i think) for first. They would only award the trip if the had 38 total entries in their 6(?) scheduled 1 table sng satellites. They fell short of that for the week so they had 4 guys play the final tourney, with two chopping 1st for $750 each. I'm not sure how many total entries they collected, so I'm not sure how much Royal raped the players there. I didn't really want to play the tourney, but my wife is really into the Oasis, so she talked me into it. In the tourney, I was pretty quickly the chip leader, then got crushed with two standard bad beats to the same guy who won our table. oh well...
****** Regarding the crap company that designed "Lightning Poker" tables, this is just a warning as to how dumb some electronic tables could be. First, nine players max. In the the 8th spot at the head of the table sat a little computer terminal that acted as the cashier/floor for the table. You slide your room key into the thing and enter your name setting up your account. You then have to feed the machine some money. For some reason the machine wouldn't read most $100 bills from 2006 or later (this according to the pit boss, although it worked for me a few times). People instead would either have to take the time to find a working $100, or feed several $20's into the machine which was time consuming (at times having to go to cage for different bills).
***** You could only be away from the table for 5 minutes max before having to give up your seat (fair enough for a cruise. I understand not wanting people hogging seats while hitting the buffet or shows). The downside is that when you leave, you can get a ticket and cash out at the cage OR leave the money on your card. If you leave the money on your card, when you sign back in, you actually have to print up a ticket then feed it back into the same machine to get credit for the ticket you just printed. How f'in stupid is that?For the most part it was the players in the 7 and 9 seat having to explain this to all the newcomers.
**** I didn't really notice a pattern of action flops or ridiculous computer hands some suspect these things are programmed to do. There were the standard bad beats you would see on live tables, nothing sick except for my wife getting it all in pre with AA vs. KK against some kid from Montreal who flopped quads. ouch. In the tourney I flopped a set of J's, losing to flopped broadway, but I've seen that kind of stuff with live dealers.
**** Anyway, that's it for me until my next cruise which should be in august on a carnival from ny to canada, although my wife and I might take the kids on one in April for spring break if we find a bargain.

Nice tr, thx. BTW, there are plenty of bargains around for April cruises right now. In fact, on the two-week Royal Caribbean cruise from Miami to Malaga, Spain that I'm going on in April, outside view cabins are currently going for $449pp.

Repositioning cruises are always longer and cheaper.

Going on Carnival Fantasy out of Charleston, SC April 23-28.
Any other 2+2ers on this one?

Not on that cruise, but was just on the fantasy back in december, never saw the table with more then 3 or 4 people so I never sat down to play. Maybe with the spring and summer months more people wil be on board and playing.

Have fun, the fantasy is a little out dated, but can still be a blast.

I just got back from an 11 day cruise on the Norwegian Dawn. After reading this thread and other stories on the web, I was surprised to see a real poker table with a live dealer.

I only played for a little while on two different occasions (I had a bad run of cards one time and got sucked out on the other). The play was pretty bad, but unfortunately, it was often rewarded (for example, EP called a raise to $10 with K4 and hit 2 pair the flop).

The buy-in was $60-$200 and the rake was %10 up to $25. The second night I played, I looked around the table after a couple hours and couldn't find where all the money went. Two people had been busted after buying in for $100 (that was the standard buy-in) but there were only 2 people at the table with more than $100 (and they didn't have more than $150 each). Then I realized all our money was in the rack in front of the dealer. It was disheartening to see the dealer take $25 out of a three-way all in. That was the major reason I quick playing.

The dealers were surprisingly good. I only saw a couple mistakes and they weren't anything to get upset about.

From talking to the dealers, the action is actually better on the shorter (4 or 7 day) cruises so I'm hoping to try my luck on one of those because I had horrible luck on this one (at the poker table as well as the blackjack table).

That rake is insane. 10% up to $6.00 on Carnival seems to be by far the best and even that's high.

Just got back from a 7 day cruise on Norwegian Epic

Cruise Line: Norwegian Cruise Lines
Ship's Name: Epic
Date of Cruise: March 31 -April 7
Number of tables: Two tables
Live or e-table: Live
Blinds: $2/$4
Buy-in: $100-$400 max
Rake structure: 10%, $25 cap.
How often did the game run: Usually every night around 8-9 PM. The second table was usually full by 9 or 10. There was a wait list most nights.

I only got a chance to play one night of the cruise and was lucky enough to have a huge fish giving money away at the table. There were about 3 other guys (younger guys, 18 to early twenties probably) that seemed in decent. The rest of the table was older loose passive types. The big fish had won that day's tourney (see below) for a $3000 score. He was a maniac. Most players bought in for the min $100, but he bought in for $400 and after giving it away, would rebuy for $300 more. I played for 3 hours and profited for about $250 from him and few small pots off the other players. It was a pretty wild table, and I counted about 5 pots that were over $200, the biggest being about a $400 pot. One hand I remember, the pot was at least $150, and it was won by someone who showed bottom pair?!?

I don't play a lot of live poker, nor do I play cash (SNGs mainly). Not sure if this is typical, but it seemed crazy to me.

They had 3 daily tourneys during the cruise. The structure was so ridiculous that got a copy so I could transpose accurately here for you.

$75 +$25 Buy in ($100 buy in $25 goes to house)
Start with $2000 in tChips.
Blinds:
$100/$200 30min (rebuys)
$200/$400 30min (rebuys)
Break (Add on $100 for $4000 tChips)
$400/$800 15min
$500/$1000 15min
$1000/$2000 15 min double there after every 15min...

Top 3 player paid. It looked like they had 20-40+ players each time. Since they only had 2 poker tables, the other people played 6-7 handed at the black jack tables.

I played in the last tourney of the cruise, and while most everyone tried to play "poker" post flop with 10 big blinds, I played push/fold. Busted before the end of the 2 level (A9s < 44). Sorta feel like I should have loosed up my shove range a little, but whatever. Did not rebuy.

That was 2/4 NL right? The pot sizes don't sound very large to me but I'm used to a room where at 2/5 they'll typically have 50+ in the pot pre-flop.

That tourney structure is beyond ridiculous. That should be over in < 2 hrs.

Cruise Line: Holland America
Ship's Name: Veendam
Date of Cruise: July 8-15, 2012
Number of tables: 1
Live or e-table: Live
Blinds: 1-2 NL
Buy-in structure: 30-100
Rake structure: 10% $5 max (rake taken out in 25 cent increments)
How often did the game run: Afternoons and evenings at sea if at least 4 wanted to play.

Also Tournaments afternoons at sea $50-10 One table. Blind structure was crazy, didn't play.

The best thing I can say about the dealers is that they tried really hard and were very nice. Most didn't know the rules ... "Chop the blinds??? never heard of THAT". Is it worse for the dealer who called string bets that weren't there, or the dealer who didn't know what one was?? And if someone got up and missed their blind -- forget it!!!

Given the $100 max buy in, with most players buying in at the minimum, there was never a lot of money at the table -- mostly a 'fun' game.

Do pretty much all cruises have poker/casino games?

the major cruise lines all have casinos I believe, with the exception of Disney. Holland, Carnival, Celebrity, Royal C, and NCL all have poker, although maybe not on all ships. You could always go on cruisecritic and ask around on their forums.

I'll be going on the Carnival Glory out of NYC for a 5 nighter up to Canada in a couple weeks. I've played poker on 5 or 6 cruises and made money on each, probably averaging about 700. I'm hoping expecting for the same this cruise. I'll report sometime when I get back.

Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship's Name: Fascination
Date of Cruise: June 28-July 2, 2012
Number of tables: 1
Live or e-table: e-table
Blinds: 1-2 NL
Buy-in structure: 200 Max
Rake structure: $5 max
How often did the game run: In the evenings they only require 2 players to start a game. I played only once but other players said they got a game one other night. We got up to 5 players at one point but most of the time it was three handed.

I posted a story about the game in the Dumbest plays you have seen live thread , didn't know about this thread.

Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship's Name: Glory
Date of Cruise: July 12th - July 16th 2012 (Boston to Saint John)
Number of tables: 1
Live or e-table: Poker Pro e-table
Blinds: 1/2 NL
Buy-in structure: $20 - $200
Rake structure: 15% up to $6 in 0.25 increments (no rake 2 or 3 handed)
How often did the game run: Early afternoon spotty. Around 8pm runs strong until 2-4am

Cruiseship poker is very dependent on the crowd you get. You are going to get a rotating cast of 20-30 people who will play on most cruises, and by the second day you already know basically who will be there. This was my third time playing on a cruise ship, and by far my least successful (won like $170 over 11 hours or so). On a 7 day Alaskan cruise there was a guy who played the whole time and always rebought full to $200 and probably went through like $2k, which obviously helped my bottom line.

As a few people have pointed out (and I did in another thread on the topic) the best thing about cruise ship poker is that the players can get money from their cruiseship card which they also use for drinks, etc. which means that no fights with the ATM and less time to think about if they should really be rebuying for another $200.

As for when the game goes: after lunch on our two days at sea I would sit at the table and try to start a game, and was fairly unsuccessful starting one. On the second day at sea, I sat from like 2:30 - 3 and only got even one person interested, but he wouldn't start unless it was 4 handed (lol rake). I went up to the room for a bit, came back at 3:45 and 5 people were playing?!?!

In the evenings, the game gets full and I waited 2 hours once to get a seat (I was fourth on the unofficial list when I showed up at 11:30). The last night I went down there at 10:30 and saw a full table and 4 players hanging around so I just went to bed early for once.

Our table was fairly laggy (the graphics, not the players) and needed to be reset and cleaned, so that was annoying and cut down on the hands per hour seen. There could be multiple preflop actions completed before the main screen even responded.

Also, just don't bluff. Period. I tried to bluff at a few obvious orphan pots and always got called in like 3 spots. It was annoying and I knew better, but we are talking like $5 bets into $10 pots.

Pretty much want to hit up a cruise here sometime soon. I'll most likely be going solo (broke friends) so my only option is to try and get target a spot that will have some poker. The ones below are the ones I'm debating:

Ante Up Cruise in Nov. - I'm not really sure if I want to go on a "poker cruise" though. Reason being I would like to think there would be better players on there - True? Though I would like to think there would be games 24/7.

Carnival Cruise with the 100k guarantee on Oct. 28 - You can get the 750 buy-in tickets for uber cheap. People are selling them on eBay and what not for like 200 bucks. So I could in theory get a 750 buy-in + 7 day cruise for 1.1k. I would like to think the games would be semi-constant and a little softer.

Random Cruise - If I choose to do a lost minute cruise or look for a deal then I bet I could get on a 7+ day cruise for less than 500 bucks. I have a bunch of airline miles. So I could just fly to wherever (most likely FL) for free and hope that some action is alive and kickin. Obvious con is I could hop on the cruise and end up playing 1-2 NL for 7 days vs. the same four guys. lol.

Thoughts?

You may want to check into how some of the cruise line handle the occupancy thing if your traveling alone. B/c I think every room is based on double occupancy.

Also, not sure if you have read the other posts in this thread, but if you take a regular cruise, if you play just Abc poker, you should come out +$$$. Granted you run the risk of not having a large player pool, but I think if you select the right ship, that should not be an issue.

I would suggest once of the new Oasis of the seas, or Allure of the seas.... They are the newest / largest ships sailing out of the us. (florida and texas I think.)
With soooo many people on board, I would think the games should be no problem.

The wife and I are planning a cruise on Oasis.o.t.S. next year sometime.

Hope this helps.

Carnival is the only cruise line I've been on that did not have an exorbitant rake. For example, Norwegian was 10% rounded up to a maximum of $25. It also has been my experience that cruises out of New York seem to get a larger player pool but I've only been on about 10 cruises that had poker so ymmv.

I would say the Carnival 100K guarantee would be your best bet. I believe that Carnival's single supplement is only 150% of the regular rate not 200% like a lot of other cruise lines.

I'll be on the Oasis of the Seas in December playing in their Royal Poker Tournament Finals. Won a cruise for two and a seat in the tournament in April, playing their lol Double Shootout tournament.

Yeah, I'm like 90% there on doing this, but the "based on double occupany" charges are killer. Need to find another degen to go with so I can save 300-400 bucks.

Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship's Name: Carnival Glory
Ports: From New York round trip; stops at Boston, Portland Maine, Saint John Canada and Halifax Canada.
Date of Cruise: Sept 22-29 2012
Number of tables: 1
Live or e-table: PokerPro E-Table
Blinds: $1/$2
Buy-in structure: $20-$200
Rake structure: 15% max of $6. Rounded up at every $5 in the pot to the next quarter. No rake HU or 3 handed.
How often did the game run: The game ran every night after dinner, and during the afternoons on our two days at sea. Often there would be a few guys interested in playing just hanging around the casino, but nobody would start the game heads-up. Most of the time I sat down with my girlfriend and started playing HU and within 3 or 4 hands the game was up to 5 handed or more. The game ran 6 or 7 handed most of the time, but did fill up a few times.

Due to the itinerary of this cruise and the time of year, the passengers were even older than on typically cruise. The players weren't complete spewtards like you would hope but the games were still very good. A few of the players bought in full, some bout in for $60-$100 and a handful minbought for $20 each time.

And how did you do?

I flopped set under set, straight under straight and flush under flush each for a full $200 buy-in yet I still broke even on the week.

My husband isn't crazy about cruising like I am. I sometimes go alone, sometimes he goes with me but deals poker (two Cardplayer cruises). Sometimes he goes just because our best friend loves cruising, like me, and he wants to pal along.

Anyway, I remember our first Poker Pro cruise. A couple of reps from PP were there. They were installing two tables in the lobby (yeah, the lobby of the actual boat, the Carnival Spirit, right where you embark, it was awesome, they were constantly filled). We got some freebies, lots of comps, etc.

Point to the story is, we have sailed on that ship about three times since, and it's always packed to the gills. Since it is right in the ship's lobby, adjacent to the casino, and the only poker on board it is super juicy. Mostly my husband has taken to playing constantly. I have been on Spirit six times (all 8-day/night cruises, all to the same places, lol). Most of those have had the PP tables. The first was a CP cruise so no PP. One was a B2B which is awesome except that it's more dull than I thought during turnover day. Oh, I got away from the point. The point is that my husband plays those tables during the 8 days and usually makes our fare and expenses or better! Yes, even given the horrible rake.

Also, Carnival can be insanely cheap. I remember the 2nd of my B2B cruises. It was that perfect week that starts either on Thanksgiving or the day after. That week no one except the Canuck's want to go. I got 8-days/nights for $250 pp. That is cheaper than we live at home (now you know why I've been on Spirit so much. I don't even really like Carnival, nor the Spirit, it's just so cheap). The most I think I ever paid for a Spirit cruise was $400, I believe, and that is when I first went on her, during a CP cruise in 2005, when Glenn dealt poker, so it was kind of BOGO free. And yes, it sucked.

On a good note, I met my best female friend on the Spirit. She worked for Carnival for 8 years. She is a Croatian and no longer works for Carnival, but lives on her home island in Croatia and we are still best buddies.