Cruise: Day 2

Day 2 was a day at sea and started with the Texas Hold'em tournament at 9:30 AM, which actually felt like 8:30 AM because we changed time zones! I am happy to say I finished in 6th place, but less happy to say that only the top three made money. The blinds go up so fast, it really turns into something of a crap shoot, but of course it would have been nice to get paid. I was crippled right before the first break (though I managed to claw my way back later) with the following hand:

Blinds were 200/400, and I had about 5000 chips. I was on the button against 6 opponents. I don't remember the exact action, but there was one limper to me and I looked down at QQ. I raised it to 1600, the small blind folded, the big blind (who also had about 5000, but soon I would learn it was slightly less than whatever I had) called, and the limper folded. Flop was T, J, J (sound familiar?!?). Big blind checks, I quickly move all-in, he thinks for a few minutes and calls, showing 88. Sounds like I'm about a 9-1 favorite, right? But guess what the turn card was! Go on, guess, I'm sure you have no idea. Here's a hint: the river helped neither of us.

We met Dayong and Ron for lunch afterwards at the Venetian. It was pretty gross... hamburgers were barely edible. Dinner at Aqua that night was fun, especially since they kept serving us broiled rock lobster tails, without us even asking for them. I don't think rock lobster tastes quite as good as Maine lobsters, though I actually did prefer the texture of the Caribbean crustaceans over that of their cold-water cousins.

As luck would have it, Alice's camera also broke. So we were now camera-less.

We skipped the show that night, and I went to the casino and played in the Hold'em cash game. The 4th and 5th place finishers from the tournament were also playing there, so we jokingly dubbed it the "Sore Losers Table." All kidding aside, I did find out pretty quick that it was going to be extremely difficult to win anything here-- the rake was INSANE. I have played some places where the rake was 10% of the pot, with a max of $5, and that's considered very high. On this ship, the rake was 10% with a max of $50! Despite the long odds, I played into the wee hours of the night. Once or twice, we felt the whole table lurch as if a tropical storm were brewing outside, but we all just looked at each other nervously and attributed it to the one or two alcoholic beverages consumed earlier in the evening...