Cruising

Taking a week long non poker vacation is something I have not done in a long time, but felt the time was right. I just returned from a week in the Caribbean on a Carnival Cruise. During the trip I visited St Thomas, Barbados, Dominica and Aruba. A good time was had. The best island in my opinion was Barbados, home of “The boatyard,” restaurant, bar, beach club. They had ocean trampolines, a rope swing, a slide and volleyball, making for a fun day.

Besides visiting a bunch of different places the best part of the cruise is the food. The main dinner in the fancy dinning hall was my favorite 2 hours of the night. All the meals being inclusive, ordering 2 appetizers, a salad, 2 entrees, and 2 deserts was a pretty common occurrence for everyone in my party. My favorite night (the menu is different everyday) was the lobster bisque, and melon wrapped in prosciutto, then the Caesar salad followed by the NY Strip, and a lobster tail. Capped with some chocolate cake…yea the belt was loosened that night for sure!!

While not planning on playing any poker, and very minimal casino gambling, I somehow managed to come home with a few hundred more than my total expenses while on the boat and islands. In general I am not a big casino gambler, but 2 short craps sessions and 1 roulette session tuned me nice little profit. But the most fun gambling was clearly the 5-10 limit hold’em. I only played 1 session for maybe 1 hour after the onboard club was closed for the night. At first I was raising every hand after looking at my cards, then decided I needed a new strategy and decided to raise every hand without looking. Either way, I was crushing them.

My favorite hand of the night, there was like 9 limpers, a raise then reraise and I am on the button with 68 clubs, so I toss in the 20 to cap it. 15 players to the flop of 4-7-10 rainbow, there is a bet and a bunch of callers, I raise someone reraises and I cap my big draw. The turn is a 5, someone bets, a few people call I raise everyone calls, the river is some meaningless card, the guy bets into me, the callers give him this are you an idiot look, and I raise and they all call. I begin hearing all the comments, “you capped preflop with 68,” “you capped the flop with a gut shot”, blah blah blah. I did have 68 sooooted and I didn’t have a gutshot. Anyway all in all I beat those guys for a smooth $150.

This week I am planning on getting some poker playing done in the beginning of the week, because I know the end of the week is going to be a little crazy. With “March Madness” beginning Thursday and St. Patrick’s Day Friday, I feel like there won’t be much “grinding” taking place.