Card Player cruise to Alaska review
Card Player cruise to Alaska review.
I think Cardplayer treated you nice. They ran a couple private excursions for prices far better than offered by the cruise line. Jan and Linda made sure to give away all of their daily free drinks by midnight every day. The dealers were mostly excellent. The worst dealer in my opinion was the one "loved' by Jan and Linda (mostly for being a nice person but nothing to do with her dealing) so she knows she has a guaranteed job and probably zero incentive to improve. Interactions with the floor staff were good and they hustled to bring you chips, seat you, get drinks ordered etc., However in trying to get a different game started they would start a list and then lie to your face about legitimately making an attempt to actually starting the game. They make a big deal on all their communication about being willing to run any game for which there is interest and that it very true - as long as that game is 3-6 limit, 4-8 O8, 1-3NL or 2-5NL. The night we had a list of 9 people to play mixed games at 7pm, they opened three 4-8 O8 games and two 3-6 limit tables before even attempting to see who was still around to play a mixed game and then it was 'impossible' to start a mixed game because 4 players were sitting at 08 and that meant they would lose an O8 table. Well duh you called all the other games over and over, what were we going to do, just sit there and not play? It's just a bunch of bs.
The tournaments are structured ok, considering they need to wrap in under 5 hours but the rake is 20%+ on everything except the main event and some of the rake makes no sense, for example a satellite costs $160, pays a $600 main event ticket plus $25 ($35 rake or 21.87%). The $170 survivor also pays $625 ($45 or 26.47% rake!). So why are they taking an extra $10 in rake? Might as well play all satellites and cash in your extra tickets.
Cash game rake is ok 10% to $6 plus $1 extra on the button.
If holdem is your game or you want to sit there and grind 4-8 O8 with 70 year olds then a Cardplayer cruise is for you. You can rebuy to 80% of the big stack so as you can imagine the 2-5 game had an average stack of about 10k by the end of the night, to the point that they were running out of chips and using cash. There was one non-holdem tournament and it was limit O8. Go figure.
Alaska is about the only cruise where I would consider a Cardplayer cruise. As it is generally cold, cloudy and raining during days at sea, you might as well be inside playing poker but anywhere the weather is nice I would rather be out on deck enjoying the sun and pools.
Also Cardplayer cruises exclusively seems to use Royal Caribbean for their cruises. I always wanted to try RC but I thought it was mediocre at best and it is unlikely I would sail RC again. They seem to treat their repeat cruisers pretty well but it would not be worth the many cruises it would take before you get there.
I think Cardplayer treated you nice. They ran a couple private excursions for prices far better than offered by the cruise line. Jan and Linda made sure to give away all of their daily free drinks by midnight every day. The dealers were mostly excellent. The worst dealer in my opinion was the one "loved' by Jan and Linda (mostly for being a nice person but nothing to do with her dealing) so she knows she has a guaranteed job and probably zero incentive to improve. Interactions with the floor staff were good and they hustled to bring you chips, seat you, get drinks ordered etc., However in trying to get a different game started they would start a list and then lie to your face about legitimately making an attempt to actually starting the game. They make a big deal on all their communication about being willing to run any game for which there is interest and that it very true - as long as that game is 3-6 limit, 4-8 O8, 1-3NL or 2-5NL. The night we had a list of 9 people to play mixed games at 7pm, they opened three 4-8 O8 games and two 3-6 limit tables before even attempting to see who was still around to play a mixed game and then it was 'impossible' to start a mixed game because 4 players were sitting at 08 and that meant they would lose an O8 table. Well duh you called all the other games over and over, what were we going to do, just sit there and not play? It's just a bunch of bs.
The tournaments are structured ok, considering they need to wrap in under 5 hours but the rake is 20%+ on everything except the main event and some of the rake makes no sense, for example a satellite costs $160, pays a $600 main event ticket plus $25 ($35 rake or 21.87%). The $170 survivor also pays $625 ($45 or 26.47% rake!). So why are they taking an extra $10 in rake? Might as well play all satellites and cash in your extra tickets.
Cash game rake is ok 10% to $6 plus $1 extra on the button.
If holdem is your game or you want to sit there and grind 4-8 O8 with 70 year olds then a Cardplayer cruise is for you. You can rebuy to 80% of the big stack so as you can imagine the 2-5 game had an average stack of about 10k by the end of the night, to the point that they were running out of chips and using cash. There was one non-holdem tournament and it was limit O8. Go figure.
Alaska is about the only cruise where I would consider a Cardplayer cruise. As it is generally cold, cloudy and raining during days at sea, you might as well be inside playing poker but anywhere the weather is nice I would rather be out on deck enjoying the sun and pools.
Also Cardplayer cruises exclusively seems to use Royal Caribbean for their cruises. I always wanted to try RC but I thought it was mediocre at best and it is unlikely I would sail RC again. They seem to treat their repeat cruisers pretty well but it would not be worth the many cruises it would take before you get there.
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