Downtown St Thomas is a great town, but take a cab it's too long to walk from port, many people make that mistake when they eyeball it from port. Get the alcoholic drink package if they have it. Pizza sucks on the boat, don't bother. Burgers and hot-dogs not bad. Dinners in the dining room are decent. Drinks are not watered down, drink carefully otherwise you will fall asleep at 5pm. I won $14,000 on a cruise playing blackjack, a heater is a heater, don't listen to the math guys saying the odds suck, gamble if you want. Bring a case of water on the boat for your room. Do not mouth off to staff or get any type of aggressive behavior, they will kick you off, seen it happen. I hope you are close to your girlfriend, the rooms are postage stamps and if you don't know everything about her now, you will very soon. Tip anywhere and everywhere, staff works their ass off and are relegated to rooms below sea level. Comedians are generally funny on a boat, their shows are funny and they like to drink during the day so find them at the lido deck bar and drink with them. Follow the rules, you break the rules you will either being taking a flight from the port they boot you off, or face Customs.
This is patently incorrect as many have testified over the years. Daly recently I believe
Never had such a good time and made so much money from a $1/2 game. Do not underestimate the power of alcohol and snap reloads with their cruise card linked to credit card. The other players are always chill and often drunk/funny.
Does St Marteen still have the old America’s Cup ships? That was fun. Everyone is assigned a task. Man a winch or whatever. Anything with a sail on the water is fun.
There is always an excursion with a catamaran. Fast, silent, so close to the water. Always lots of rum on board.
Charham, don’t let Druff kill the fun. It’s a fun cheap week. Its not Monaco in the spring. If you like people and aren’t wound too tight it’s a week in the sun without a whole lotta stress
Last edited by Sanlmar; 02-09-2018 at 02:33 PM.
Most teed up thread for leader in the history of this forum.
Druff thinks a 10% rake isn't beatable. Daly says it is.
Both are right depending on the key variable - the other players. By the numbers There will always be 1-2 other players who grind poker regularly. There are 2-3 that are the best at the home game they have every 3-4 months. Then it's the matter of the drunk donks that fill in the rest. I've paid for my entire cruise on more than one occasion via the poker table. Mrs Daly cleared $1,100 last cruise playing 1-2.
Lot of wisdom in this snarky response. It all comes down to time.
Daly Sr and Momma Daly have 560 days at sea. Druff has some time on his hands when not busy running this site at a loss. If I had time on my hands without family responsibilities and the like I'd much rather do 4 weeks on a cruise on a budget than only one week.
Now where time is at a premium if I can only get away for one week I'm not going to be as frugal with my choices.
BUMP
My only cruise tip now is: Don't go until there's a coronavirus vaccine. Even if you had it already, if there's an outbreak on the ship, they're probably quarantining everyone and not porting anywhere for weeks. Not that any cruise ship is sailing now.
LOL @ the responses I got in this thread though.
1) You're not beating 10% uncapped rake no matter how bad the opponents are. Trust me. Uncapped 10% is insanely bad. Beating it short term over a few cruises means nothing. I played it once for fun on a Princess cruise, busted all 6 players at the table, and still the rake was higher than what I won, which means rake ate over 50% of the money lost at the table. (And we didn't play very long.) Wow!
2) I wasn't trying to explain how to "budget" cruise. Budget cruising sucks because it involves cramming your family of 4 into a lower-deck inside cabin, eating in the shitty main dining room every night, and taking crappy group tours on shore. I was advocating smart cruising -- spending where you get a big increase in pleasure (such as the premium restaurants), booking private shore excursions with local tour guides in advance (much better AND cheaper than the ship option), buying your staterooms at the right time (not when it's marked up like most of the sheep do), putting no more than 2 people per room, and avoiding spending onboard in areas which are super marked up or borderline scams. You can do all of this and have a great time for a very reasonable cost. Most people I see cruising spend a lot on dumb shit and cheap out where they should be spending (such as the premium restaurants). They end up getting off the cruise thinking it was an expensive fail.
Two years later, I got frustrated all over again reading this thread.
I hope HoodedN had a good time before the 2020 Super AIDS shut down the cruise industry.
PS- This isn't directly at Daly. While we disagree on the poker issue, we have discussed the cruise issue privately and we mostly agree.
Also shout-out to passive aggressive pathological liar The_Lurker
RIP
I am going to wait until about August when cruise stocks are all in the single digits, then go on a buying spree. Nothing lasts forever, an old sage told be to always buy when things look the bleakest. In 2023 cruise stocks will be at an all time high, the demand will explode when there is a vaccine. They are not going out of business. There will be protections in place for passengers then, what they are who knows but they will be there.
We have been back and forth on this topic a few times Druff and I think I just figured out why we disagreed so much.
As you are aware I am (or temporarily was) a princess guy. They have the poker pro machines and they rake 10% up to a $8 Cap. And despite your experiance I can tell you with 100% certainty it can be beat and beat bad. I’ve made thousands, my wife has come back a four figure winner twice, and there are several others in the thread who have told you it’s posible. 2-3 people on average sit down and give away a buy in of $80-$100. 2-3 others play at a home game every 4 months and just aren’t the same caliber a player as some on this site. That more than makes up for the rake.
Now - the above is princess. What I didn’t know, or didn’t remember, is RCL and NCL spread love games where the rake is 15% with a $25!!! Cap! In fact I just read they have .50 chips at the table so they don’t have to round down. Now THAT is fucking ridiculous and I’m perfectly willing to say that isn’t beatable unless the game is perfect.
He was full of crap about a ton of stuff. It was difficult to tell what the exact story was with him, but it wasn't how he presented it. He apparently also had a really creepy and weird conversation with Larry Laffer where he offered to get him a job, Larry called him, and he lectured Larry about Jesus Christ and all other kinds of weird shit. Or at least so Larry told me.
The only thing he was 100% truthful about was his location. He did jump around states like he said he did. When he claimed to be in Montana, he was in Montana. When he claimed to be in New Mexico or whatever, he was there too. But of course, he knew I could check IPs and instantly call out such BS, so it's not a surprise that he was being honest about his location.
The guy had more life drama and crazy stories in the short time he was posting here than most people do in five lifetimes. Remember when he supposedly fell and almost was completely paralyzed, and then suddenly we never heard about it again, and he was back to actively working on his property? LOL
Then there was the absurd story of running into an old 1980s flame in a tiny New Mexico art gallery, and she just happened to be all ready to leave her husband who, coincidentally, then came out as gay at the same time and said she had his blessing to be with Lurker. LOL
He posted all kinds of pics supposedly of himself and his girlfriend, both current and 1980s, and even (gross) nudes of her, but somehow couldn't find 60 seconds to snap a picture with a sign in order to prove they were really of him. He claimed he had "nothing to prove". LOL
Then he started all of these major building projects, posted a few pictures at the beginning, and we never heard of these projects again, until suddenly he popped up in a different state with a new crazy building project. LOL
Oh, and he also lurked these forums going back to mid-2000s NWP, but never saw occasion to register or post into deep into the PFA era. LOL
He eventually left here by posting a pic of my mom -- a woman in her 70s who has never been part of this forum, and never did a thing to harm him. I considered tracking down this asshole and fully outing all of his bullshit, but I decided it was best to just ban him and let it go.
Seriously, what a fucking weirdo.
“, eating in the shitty main dining room every night,“
I don’t think I’ve been on a cruise where the main dining room was shitty. Some cruise lines were better than others but they have all been pretty good...all buffets are relative shit though.
Can I let you in on a little secret? 90% of the dining room food is also available at the main buffet. On top of the dining room fair they mix in a lot of bullshit like jello and hot dogs.
If you are looking for a “special” experiance at the buffet they almost always have one section on one side for Indian food. Typically a lot of Indian workers on board who are the highest rung on the worker ladder before the jump to officer. They are the engineers, electricians and doctors. As such the boat throws them a bone and they get authentic home made Indian food. Now.... what gets put out isn’t that. It’s ok but it’s not the good stuff. If you know Indian food and know what you want go there on the 1-2 day and talk to the chief who is working the Indian section - ask him where he is from blah blah and ask him is there is anything out back that the team is eating. This works especially if you are looking for hot stuff they can’t put out. Ask him if he is working that night (pro tip: he is) and throw him a $10. He will remember you and there is a very good chance he will have something waiting for you. We went on a trip last year with my wife’s cousin who is dot not feather and he can eat the hottest shit On earth. I had him set up up there after day one and to this day he says the few dishes he got was some of the best (and hotest) Indian ever. They also made Thai 1-2 nights as well.
There is usually 1-2 “special” items that’s dining room only on any given night - usually some shrimp/Lobster/steak dish.
Remember Sparky Griswald? Here was a guy who claimed he was leaving for some ranch in New Mexico at 6am on a SW flight to buy a million dollar house. He came back and posted the same day "with contract in hand". We were all like, okay you took a flight in the morning, signed a million dollar home contract, then flew back by 6pm and posted on Tydepoker? It was so preposterous. Obviously we all knew how it turned out and it was just a pretense to a forum rolling before he was arrested.
The Lurker was an odd cat. I am sure some of his story was real given the detail. But the whole "I met my high school sweetheart 25 years later in a random antique store" was really just too much to believe. I guess it technically could happen, but the odds of stumbling in an antique store and meeting a former girlfriend are remote and falling in love a week later and getting married are infentesible.
I am guessing that most of what Lurker said was untrue or exaggerated.
Maybe some grains of truth in there. Too difficult to tell with all the bullshit he constantly slinged.
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