Card Player Cruises Trip Report

I've just returned from a 10 day Caribbean cruise (dodging hurricanes with great success) booked through the above company. In case any of you have considered doing one of these trips I thought it worthwhile to post a little trip report....

Basically, Card Player Cruises is a company owned by Linda Johnson (you've probably seen her doing the live commentary on WPT final tables), Jan Fisher and Mark Tenner, all of whom are Vegas pro's with a number of poker-related business interests. They've been running cruises for 10 years or so, I believe. Basically, the cruises are normal, commercial cruise ships where customers who have booked places through CPC get the additional facility of a poker-room on board. Therefore, any non-poker players (such as the future Mrs Sheriff) still have the full run of a normal cruise trip. I booked the trip in July and, as a non-US customer of CPC, could only book the actual cruise through them. Therefore, flights and other stopovers were booked separately via the internet.

The cruise departed from Fort Lauderdale in Florida, 2 days before Wilma hit, and was scheduled to stop in the Bahamas, Curacao, Aruba, Panama (after going down the canal) and Costa Rica before returning. However, due to another Hurricane developing close to Costa Rica the final stop was cancelled and the ship re-routed to Ocho Rios, Jamaica, instead (much to the delight of most of the passengers when it was announced). The ship was a Holland America cruise ship offering good facilities (2 swimming pools, gym, spa, casino, cinema, in-cabin DVD's, etc) and the standard of food and accomodation was high (we'd booked a standard outside cabin and had no complaints so the suites must've been pretty damned good!)

Anyway, enough of the non-poker stuff! Part of the ship's Piano bar had been taken over by CPC for the poker room, which had around 12 tables. This meant we were just outside the main restaurant on the ship so we attracted plenty of attention from non-CPC passengers. I believe that a few of them asked whether they could play and were charged a CPC 'membership' of $150 to do so (from speaking to the US passengers it sounds like the CPC prices for the cruise were pretty cheap so no-one seemed to have any problems with the relaxation of the exclusivity rules to other passengers). There was an introductory cocktail party on the first day (where caps, t-shirts and other freebies were given out) during which the operation of the room was explained. Basically the room would be open from 9am to 2-3am whenever the ship was not in port. The only exception was a break for dinner from 6-7.30pm (all CPC passengers were booked onto the early dinner sitting of 6.15pm unless they had specificallly requested otherwise). The intention was to spread any game for which there was sufficient demand and it was stressed that the room was strictly a no-smoking, no abuse cardroom.

The card-room opened up after dinner on the first day and the games typically available were very much in line with a typical Vegas card room of a similar size. The main games were $4/8 and $10/$20 limit hold'em, a $1/2 NLHE game with min $100, max $200 buy-in, $4/8 Limit Omaha/8 with a half-kill. The 'big game' on this trip was a $20/40 mixed game (Hold'em, Omaha/8 with a kill and Stud/8) although I was advised that on other trips there are often bigger games spread. There were also a number of $2/4 (and occasionally $1/2) limit games available, aimed primarily at beginners. A beginners lesson was also held by Linda and Jan on Day 3 of the cruise aimed mainly at the non-players on board who were interested in having a go. The room was usually well attended throughout the day and most games were available at all times. On some occasions, usually after midnight, the games sometimes got short-handed but were still available to play.

The dealers and card-room staff were very professional and the experience was very similar to playing in Vegas. Rakes were in line with Vegas card rooms, 10% capped at a maximum of $4 and requests to reduce the rake for short-handed games were always granted. In the $10/20 game where I pretty much spent the entire week the rake was dropped to $3 max for 6 players and $2 for 5 or less. The no-abuse policy worked very well and each player had a CPC name badge (for the staff to be able to identify them as eligible to play) which helped get conversation flowing at the tables. I proved to be a bit of a 'novelty' as a UK player in a room full of Americans and (as those of you who have played live with me will know) the Sheriff cap and badge attracted plenty of good-natured comment at the tables. Several renditions of 'I Shot The Sheriff' were to be heard throughout the week!!

During the 'at sea' days, tournaments were organised, starting at 10am each morning. There were 2x$230 NLHE freezeouts, a $230 LHE freezeout and a $125 Omaha/8 freezeout during the week. All attracted between 50 and 60 players and paid out nine places. They also had a reasonable structure (30 minute clock). I heard an announcement at one point that no house drop had been taken from the tournament fees (players could take an inital $5 add-on at the start with the funds going to the dealers) although I didn't do any sums to verify this. In the $230 events, first prize was normally between $3,500 and $4,000 (not that I got anywhere near this!)

One of the concerns I had prior to making this trip was that the standard of play would be higher than normal as surely everyone who had booked through CPC would be regular poker players. However, this did not prove to be the case! The standard of play varied widely and the standard seemed no different from a typical Vegas game of equivalent limits. Many of the 'regular' players were gamblers, rather than students of the games, so the games typically played much looser than the online equivalent. For example, on the final night I folded pre-flop in middle position in the $10/20 game after an UTG raise and a UTG+1 re-raise. The pot ended up being capped 5 ways pre-flop and was ultimately won by the button who had called 4 bets cold with 7-4 offsuit.

CPC also ran a couple of 1-hour poker seminars during the week and, in general, people were happy to talk poker all day long! However, the knowledge that a sun-lounger and swimming pool were 1 minute away was a great help in dealing with the occasional bad beat!

All in all I had a great time on the trip, making many friends and probably playing more poker than I would have in an equivalent period with the Mrs in Vegas. CPC run about 5 cruises each year and I definitely intend to return (apparently each cruise has consistently attracted a 50:50 split of first-timers and returning customers). Most are of the type described above although CPC also run the Party Poker Million which is obviously a special event and is run on a much bigger scale (apparently the card room had 60 tables last time out).

If anyone has any questions then let me know.

Sheriff