I have never been on a cruise before. I have to say that it was one of the best vacations that I have ever had. I brought my whole family including my in-laws. The cruise line(Carnival) provides activities for the kids (9 yrs. and 2 yrs.) all day long with the exception of some breaks for the providers to eat and take a little break.

We arrived in Tampa on Wednesday and stayed at the Marriot at the airport. Somehow my wife got us into the VIP club which entitled us to go to the lounge on the 6th floor and participate in the happy hour and the free breakfast, definitely a nice little perk.

After dinner Gambit picked me up and we headed over to Derby Lane. Derby Lane is a really nice room with a fantastic atmosphere and horrible No-Limit Hold’em players. I like to try to put people on hands which is not possible, but all you have to do is put yourself in a spot where you are likely to be good and get it all in. The opportunities are so frequent that you don’t have to be right all that often to make money.

I was dumb enough to get up from NLH table thinking that the Omaha H/L table would be just as soft. It was not. There were 2 soft spots at this table and seemed like I was unable to get any money from them.

I dropped about $60 but given the opportunity I would just play the NLH game. Gambit posted a nice profit at the NLH table.

The next morning we went to port and got on the ship. Parts of the inside of the Carnival Inspiration looks like a throw back to the 80’s. When you first board the ship you enter in a foyer that is sort of black and purple. With lots of dark tinted glass. The Lido deck cafeteria is decorated with purple tube type ceiling decorations. Regardless of the 80 theme everything was clean and clearly everything is very well maintained.
When we got to our room it was elaborately decorated with birthday decorations as Saturday was my wife’s birthday. It was a really nice touch. Surprisingly the rooms were not as small as I has originally though they would be and there was plenty of room for a crib and fold away bunk bed for the kids.

The Poker
I have to give Chris and Scott credit here. If I were them I would have tried to run the room myself. This would have been a huge mistake. Luckily they hired Jody Russell and Cassie Greene to run the room. These two did a fantastic job, just a few things that I noted were:

• Great dealers – all of the dealers were really good. All of them were experienced, they understood the games and knew how to deal them and how to handle the sticky situations that come up. With the exception that I note below regarding a player.
• Prop players – When games were getting short handed and going to break they filled the seats with dealers that were not dealing at the time. This was a great idea. There were about 140 people in the Ante Up group and with that limited pool of players you have to get someone in these games to keep them alive. I am not sure if they were paid to play or not, I though it rude to ask so I didn’t.
• Mix of tournaments - All of the tournaments were NLH. There were a couple of turbos that I played in and they are basically a luck fest. But they also had a team tourney (which I didn’t play because it filled up too quickly) which looked like a good tourney, and they also had a deep stack main event which Fasso, and Frank, both final tabled and cashed in. In retrospect I should have skipped the turbos and played in the deep stack. I also wanted to spend time with my family and that tournament lasted from 10 am till about 10 pm.
• Mix of games – Most of the time there was a limit hold’em game and a couple of NLH games going. There was a 6-12 HORSE game going which was a little to high for me but eventually they got a 4-8 HO game going which I played whenever it was going.

Overall the room was very very well run. There are some things that I didn’t like that I will get into later.

How’d I do?

I have never run so bad in my whole life. The first night I played 1-3 NLH. I was up early but that quickly evaporated when I flopped broadway with AJ and was beat by a flush. I am not going to talk about all of the bad beats cause no one cares about bad beats. I played my ‘A’ game most of the time with a few moments of ‘B’ poker mixed in there. For example… I flopped top 2 on a Q-T-4 board and then folded the river when J-A hit on turn and river. The player showed me J-7 off. She was in position and she bluffed me off of the hand when I checked the river. I never should have checked the river against this player and she was an astute player that would never miss that opportunity. Yuck, I guess I was tired.

The HO game was fantastic. There were several players that would raise, re-raise, and cap it pre-flop with any 4 cards. This was a 4-8 game played with a half kill. So it was not uncommon to have players straddle on the kill and have each player with $36 or $48 in the pot pre-flop. This game was the most fun that I have had playing poker in years. I lost my ass but I had a good time doing it. I ran really really bad in this game. I flopped 8’s full of fives and had a woman stay to the river and spike a 9 to hit 9’s full. No low. This pot was HUGE. $48 pre-flop per player in a 4 way pot. I raised the flop and built a huge pot. Maybe she had odds to draw, I don’t really know. I held A388, which was a good hand compared to the range of the other players. There was a player, Seth that would raise every hand pre-flop regardless of any situation, he didn’t even look. He made this game HUGE but he only lasted a couple of hours. I did make a couple of mistakes in this game, such as folding a 2-4 and missing a gutterball that would have scooped. There was enough in the pot to make the calls +EV and I folded. I probably made this mistake 3-4 times which is the difference in the trip between breaking even and losing.

Some things that I didn’t like

The food was not all that great. My father-in-law set my expectation very high for the food and I honestly did not think that the food was good at all. I ordered the fish which was really really salty and I could not even finish it.

The Service was also kind of poor in the dining areas. In the cafeteria it took the staff a very long time to take away the used plates so if you get up for seconds you have to stack your plates on top of one another if you don’t have an empty table nearby to dump the old ones on to. The wait staff in the dining room was horrible. My 2 year old son was crying for some juice one evening and they brought our main course dishes before they brought the juice. I must have asked 3 times for it. After that we did not return to the dining room and just ate at the cafeteria for dinner.

The poker room – The card room was in a fairly small conference room and it was hot as hell in there at times. I do not think that it was designed to hold as many people as were in it and it was distractingly hot! The room sort of felt like a prison, the ambiance as not great, dark walls and a metal ceiling. I talked briefly to Scott about this and he mentioned that there is another option for the next cruise that they are exploring. If the other room works out I think it would be much nicer.

The room was located next to the disco, the bass was cranked up over there and it literally shook the metal ceiling tiles and created a loud tinny vibration sound mixed in the the thunderous booms of the base. The first night I came down with a splitting headache, but I played anyway. This is a pretty major annoyance and I hope that they can get the other room next time.

The first day there was an Ante Up welcome cocktail party. This was a nice touch. Sam Minutello showed up drunk and got up to the microphone and started swearing and dropping f-bombs, which I don’t really mind so much but I would expect more from someone that runs a poker room. I figure the guy is just having fun. God bless him. But some other people stated to me that they didn’t appreciate it.

That night there was a tournament and Sam showed up drunk and started yelling and screaming in the room. He was seated right behind me and it was not pleasant having him scream in my ear. At first I didn’t care, after all he’s just having fun. But after a while it really got old and I was hoping that they guy running the room would tell him to stop. Lucky I was moved. There was an older player seated at my table with 2 hearing aids. Minutello was right behind the guy and screams something at a player at our table, the old man jumped out of seat, scowled at him and had to take is hearing aids out cause Sam was blowing out his ears.

On the last night (Sunday) this same guy (Minutello) was sitting at my 4-8 Omaha game. It was a good game we were all having fun. At one end of the table was myself and another gentlemen, at the other was Minutello and a couple of his friends. They were raising just about every hand which I didn’t mind because when I get a hand I want more money it. But something really bothered me. He said out loud to his friends “why don’t we agree to check it down to the river cause we are not getting any action from that end” meaning they are not getting any action from myself and the other gentleman. So basically they would raise and re-raise with myself and the other guy in the middle and if neither of us gave them action they would just check it down. I like to limp into pots playing O8 and I was really not interested in playing a game where 4 out of 6 players were colluding to flip for capped bets pre-flop. In this scenario I definitely have to play every hand against 4 players that could be holding any 4 cards. I really didn’t appreciate this and was no longer having fun. After a few hands of that I got up. I am really surprised that a poker room manager would do this. I can assure you that I will never play in a poker room run by this guy.

They were also talking about hands while there was action pending which is a not allowed in most poker rooms. If it were just the 4 of them and they just wanted to hang out and have fun then great, but there were other players at the table and I found this annoying and disrespectful. The dealers were unwilling to say anything to Sam. I guess maybe they never know when they may find themselves in his cardroom looking for a job.  It is really unfortunate that no one said anything to this guy, and I am not sure that he would even care if they did.

Most (95%) of the people were really nice. But there were a few people that were jerks. There was another player to my left that hit quad queens. He shows one of his queens and then another player show the nut flush and then he reveals the other queen. So I asked him why did you slow roll that guy? He responded “That’s poker.”  Then some other people at the table said that he did it on accident. But he was right next to me, I saw him do it and it was a total dick move. I was glad to see Scott eliminate him in the team tournament.

Overall it was a fantastic trip and well organized and well run on the part of the Ante Up guys. I would recommend it to everyone.

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Author: Blazman

Blazman is a podcasting guru. He is the lead host of the PokerSoup podcast and can normally be found grinding out a micro-stakes profit live and online.