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...

Cruise: Day 1

First, I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to Juan's parents in Miami, for putting us up for two nights, letting me leave my car at their place for a week, and driving us to the port to start our cruise. As if the warmth of Miami weren't welcoming enough, they made it that much more so. And also, thanks to Juan and Kathy for picking us up at the airport and keeping us entertained with their adorable twins.

The bad news is that this pic, courtesy of my MacBook's built-in iSight camera, will be the last one I'll be posting for a while, since my camera broke on the first day of the cruise.

The other bad news is that, since I don't have pics to jog my memory, the following narrative is shaping up to be a stream-of-consciousness account of what may or may not have happened.

We got to the port at around 1:00, and snaked our way through the miles of check-in lines to finally board the ship at about 2:00. The first thing we did was reserve our shore excursions: a beach day at Samana, Dominican Republic, a boat ride to Virgin Gorda via Tortola (British Virgin Islands), and a Kayak/Hike/Snorkel trip on St. Thomas. We started poking around the ship after that, including making our first (of many) trips to the buffet, but it wasn't long before the announcement was made that the staterooms were ready, so we headed to check out our room. We were on Deck 4, the lowest passenger deck. As expected, the room was small, and we had a porthole rather than a window, but the view was still fine, and in fact, better than what one might expect from a porthole.

After attending the mandatory safety briefing (of which I can't remember any details... good thing we didn't sink), we went up to the pool area for the cast-off celebration. We met the entire gang there (Dayong, Ron, John, Terri, and Nicole) for some food and drinks while watching the ship leave port. Had dinner with the gang later at the Venetian-- I didn't find it to be all that spectacular, but everyone else seemed pretty happy with it. We went to the theater afterwards for the first show of the trip: a juggler/comedian. He was ok-- but the trick that would have been the most impressive I would actually consider fraudulent-- he played songs on a flat, electronic piano pad by bouncing balls on the keys. However, it was pretty clear that he wasn't actually playing the notes, but that the entire pad was a trigger for a pre-sequenced song, so that no matter where the balls landed, they played the correct notes.

Cruisin'

Cruising the Caribbean... not going to pay $0.40/min to update the blog... be back in a week!

Hard Rock Casino, Tampa FL

Pop quiz for all you poker hotshots out there.

1. What happens in a no-limit cash game when you hold pocket queens, your opponent holds pocket tens, and the flop is ten, ten, queen?

2. What happens when the exact same thing happens 10 minutes later?

That is all.

Panhandle

I'm spending the night in Tallahassee. For those of you keeping score at home, you know that means I'm on my way back east.

As I hinted at yesterday, I spent the afternoon in New Orleans. As expected, I didn't find it to be the best place in the world to hang out by myself. Looks like a crazy town to visit with friends though; the French Quarter was full of people getting drunk in the street at 2:00 PM on a Thursday.

I accidentally drove through some rough areas, too... entire blocks of apparently abandoned houses, with groups of locals loitering on the street corners. Didn't look like the best place to get a flat tire. I also got yelled at by someone who ran a stop sign and almost hit me, though I didn't understand what he said other than the ubiquitous F bomb.

I headed back to Biloxi afterwards, deciding to drop in on the 1/2 no-limit game that I didn't get to play the day before. That turned out to be a good idea, as I made back most of my earlier losses and got comped another two meals (one of which was the grossest lunch buffet ever. I might need to write just about that in a separate post some day.)

Continued eastward this morning and made it to the Air Force Armament Museum, about 30 miles east of Pensacola, FL. THAT was cool! Inside are several exhibits, including small arms, large machine guns and cannons, missiles and small planes, trainers, and history. And outside, they have actual Air Force planes, such as:

The F-15:

And the B-52 (sorry, it's so big it doesn't all fit in the pic. 8 engines... gaaa) :

Looks like I might make it back to Tampa tomorrow.

A somber update

Here was the view from my room yesterday morning from the 9th floor of the Isle of Capri: (camera-phone pic, sorry for lack of quality)

I drove to New Orleans this morning, via route 90 along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Basically, for about 35 miles, there is a beautiful beach on the left. So if you want to be in your own happy little world, you keep looking left.

On the right... I know I can't adequately describe it. I'm going to give up for now, but I'll try to revisit it later. For the curious, the words that stick out in my mind the most are "graffiti", "cement", and "emptiness."

Biloxi, MS

As much as I'd like to post another poker boast, I'm checking in in the negative column tonight. I'm at the Isle of Capri casino in Biloxi, MS, on the gulf coast. My limit game is very much weaker than my no-limit game, but the only game they were running here was a 4/8 limit game with 1/2 blinds. Yeah, weird blind structure... I'm still feeling a bit confused by it. If any limit hold'em experts out there are reading this, perhaps they can offer some words of wisdom. Anyway, thanks to two huge suckouts (that's what limit is all about, right? and apparently always against me) I finished my 10 hour shift slightly in the red.

I did comp a $17 buffet, and got a reduced rate on my hotel room, which is a whole lot nicer than the Motel 6s I've been staying at! And again, it's too cold to sleep in the car down here, so this trip may be testing my budget more than I anticipated. I'm shocked; I expected it to be a lot warmer in the deep south.

A couple of notes on the buffet: First, I kind of justified the gross over-indulgence and extreme over-eating of the holidays by reminding myself of my summer trip, and how I ate very little, filled my days with activity, and in fact lost several pounds. So then here I am the second day after TurkeyBall and I am comped a free all-you-can-eat buffet (and um, sitting on my butt for 10 hours). YAY!!!! Second note, they had snow crab legs, of which I ate several, though refrained from pigging out since I'm still a tad worried about my phantom crab allergy. No symptoms though... I seem to be doing ok.

I also see that the stock market had a rather nice rally today which makes my poker loss look smaller than the tip I just gave to the bartender here.