I am still cruising. Betty and I have had a wonderful time on this poker cruise. This one was pretty small by poker cruise standards. Two hundred players with an 11 table cardroom open when ever the ship is not in port from 9 AM to 3 AM.

I use Card Player Cruises most of the time, but if you choose to use someone else, I still recommend a poker cruise. This one was a 10 day cruise to the Panama Canal with stops in Half Moon Cay (a private island owned by Holland America Cruise Lines in the Bahamas), Curacao, Aruba, Panama, and Jamaica (was supposed to be Costa Rica but rerouted due to a tropical depression). Today in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, 24 of us from the poker group went to Dunns Falls and climbed the waterfall. Tiring, and a little difficult for me, but we all made it! We return to Ft. Lauderdale (and fly back to Las Vegas) on 11/1.

The game I played onboard most of the time was 20-40 Mixed (mostly HOE). I love split games, as a lot of players make the mistake of playing for half a pot, and worse, drawing for a half a pot. The idea behind split pot games, as I mentioned in my Card Player article “Mixed Games Anyone?” is to play for scoops (winning the whole pot) and settling for half sometimes if you miss your scoop cards. This is especially true if the game is somewhat tight, as the shipboard one is this week, as you will not get the multi-way action needed to cover you if you are drawing for half. You get nothing if you miss and almost no profit if you hit your half. I don’t have time this week to tell you how to play for scoops, but I shall try to mention this in a future thought in a few weeks when I get back from the 2005 World Poker Player Conference in Foxwoods 11/12. Please try to be there…it promises to be a great day and the discount admission price goes away 11/4).