First and foremost, the rake sucked! 10% of each pot with a maximum of $25. Yep, $25 per hand!
Second, 9 out of 10 players at the tables I played at were utter donkeys. I am talking about first class idiots that had absolutely no problem calling an all-in bet of over $100 with nothing but a flush draw. More on that later...
Next, the play was way too slow. If we were lucky, we got in 12-15 hands per hour. There were many reasons for this. Entirely too many hands were interrupted by the waiter/waitress bringing over beer/wine/cocktail (although it seemed ok when it was me getting my drink) while we all waited two or three minutes for them to get their act together. Also, every hand had a post-mortem about what each player had, etc., and rather than getting the next hand started, the dealers would sit there until everyone was done. No wonder they needed such a high rake!
Finally, there was absolutely no poker etiquette. Players had no problem saying what they had (but folded) DURING live play.
Now, I am not going to bore you with a play-by-play of the entire weekend. However, I'll just say it started horribly! Here is what I mean:
I bought into a 1/2 no limit table for $200 (the maximum buy-in). The first hand was very nice, or so I thought. I called the $10 pre-flop bet with a weak Ace-Seven (hey, it was the first hand so give me a break!) and the flop came Ace-Seven-Ten, with two diamonds. Nice! Deciding to protect my two pair, I bet $50 and get three callers. What the? The turn misses me but at least it was not a diamond.
As a result, I go all in for my remaining chip stack (i.e., $140). TWO CALLERS! Great, did both of these idiots flop or turn trips! Since everyone is all in, the other two players flip over the cards. To my horror, they both have the diamond flush draw.
Yep! They both hit on the river and I suffered a $200 loss on the very first hand to a bunch of f'ing donkeys.
I was absolutely fuming, although I hide it very well. I also understand that this is poker and idiots get lucky all of the time. But come on! $140 on a flush draw...
Anyway, I decide to take a break for the night with the remaining $20 I had in my wallet. Because I promised myself that $220 was my limit for the weekend, I was bummed. I could not stand the fact that I lost my entire stack on one hand and that I would not be playing poker for the rest of the cruise.
Then I did something very stupid: I decided to go play roulette. The ultimate game of chance where absolutely no skill is required. I sat down, plopped $5 on 0/00, and HIT bringing my "wallet" back up to $105. I threw the "dealer" a $5 tip and called it a night realizing that I just scored the $100 I would need to play at least one more poker session over the weekend!
While the rest of the weekend was not a huge Texas Hold 'Em success (as the rake kept destroying the profit per hand), I did manage to claw back up to my break-even ($220) the second night and squeezed out a $150 profit by the last night.
It was certainly not what I expected but I will take a small profit over a loss anytime.
[By the way, the Norweigen Cruise line sucks. Their idea of "free-style cruising" just means you get screwed out of good food and good service. Can you tell I would not recommend them to you?]
72suited.com will not exist soon.
2 months ago
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i didn't get it about the flush draw..there were at least 40$ in the pot pre-flop. 240$ on the flop. you made it 380$ on turn and it was only 140$ to call. flush draw is roughly 2-to-1 dog vs 2 pairs and 2.6-to-1 dog vs set. so the first caller's EV was something like +130$..whats wrong with that?
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