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Poker on Royal Caribbean cruises


Kaptah

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I'm taking a cruise with Adventure of the Seas next month, and have hard time finding any information about poker on the ship. Does somebody have an idea what kind of cash games are available, do they have live dealers or elecronic machines, what are the blinds, what is the rake?

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  I used to play poker in the army and with friends when I got out but I never got into the Texas Hold-em.  I play black jack when I m on the ships but I have seen the Texas Hold-em games.       Cant remember which ships I saw them on or what the blinds were.  Sorry but it didnt mean anything to me at the time.

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Yes, all of the Voyager and bigger ships will have a regular 10 seat Texas Hold 'Em table.  I think even some of the Radiance class ships have them now.  I know that Radiance used to have one.  They use them for the Royal Poker Tour satellite tournaments and also for cash games.  The blinds seem to vary on the different ships.  They generally have $1/$3 but sometimes they will require $2/$5 blinds which I generally shun. The minimum buy-in is $50, IIRC.  We usually start with $200 each.  If I lose that I am generally outta there.  I'm not an aggressive player so I am sometimes not particularly successful, but I love to play so I do when I can.  But sometimes, those of us who are quiet can really put a hurtin' on the donks if you get just the right cards !  LOL

All of the electronic poker machines are now GONE, thank God.  It's not that I didn't care for the machines....I actually kinda liked them but they were ALWAYS broken.  We sailed on the last cruise on Allure where they had the machines.  When we disembarked, so did the Poker Pro machines !  Now everyone has a live dealer, which seems to be the vast majority of peoples' preference.

The problem with live Texas Hold "Em cash games is that it is often difficult to get a game started.  They almost never have any action during the day.  The single exception for us was when we were on a TA on Radiance in 2015.  We played EVERY day for 12 days, afternoon and evenings.  But that is a TRUE anomaly.  Most evenings, you just kind of have to plant yourself at a table and eventually folks who are interested will come by and get a game started.  This was one nice thing about the poker machines.  They were available 24/7.  But they are gone now.  My experience is that once you get a poker "group" established, you will end up playing with the same folks every night, which is almost always a good thing.  At least you figure out who the bullies are and learn to play around them.

Of course, there are the tournament satellites but we don't play in them anymore. They rarely get enough people to participate to permit them to give away the "free" cruise so it generally ends up being cash prizes.  I am not a good tournament player so I rarely, if ever, play in them.  Dan won it one year...one of the first years that they did the Royal Poker Tour.  We got a free cruise on Liberty and an entry into the finals.  He went out in the first round.  LOL

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1 hour ago, Kaptah said:

Thank you very much for the info! Do you have any idea about the rake? 10%, 15%? What's the rake cap? Do they only have one poker table on every ship?

Yes, I do.  10% of the called pot up to $15 per hand.

The big ships - Oasis class for sure (not sure about Q class but will find out in 3 weeks) have 2 tables.  There used to be 3 of the electronic machines on the O class ships but when they booted the poker players out of their special area and installed high roller tables (which are ALWAYS empty), they went down to 2.  When they replaced the electronic machines with dealer tables, they kept it at 2.  That, presumably, is to be able to operate cash games and tournaments simultaneously, but I never ever see that occurring.

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7 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

those of us who are quiet can really put a hurtin' on the donks if you get just the right cards

Ok, so I'm not a gambler but I do understand some card playing expressions. But this one...is that Texas Holdem' slang or something left over from the USMC years? :3_grin:?

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  • 2 months later...
10 hours ago, flamtapgt said:

Can anyone tell me if the poker tables on Allure are non-smoking? Thanks in advance! 

 

 

Yes. All poker tables on RC are non smoking but that doesn’t mean there aren’t smokers lurking close by.  You cannot smoke at the tables. That’s about all that is guaranteed. 

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3 hours ago, Bean79 said:

I wish they would end smoking on all areas of the ships.

Well, if you're OK paying the premium for Celebrity their ships all have a completely smoke-free casino. I don't remember if the ship as a whole is smoke-free or if there is still a small smoking area on / around deck 5, but I've read multiple comments and seen multiple videos commenting on the smoke-free casino and how amazing it is to be able to go in there as a non-smoker who likes to gamble and not cough or struggle with the air.

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Texas Holdem cash games have been a hit or miss for me so far on RCL. I've been on Liberty, Jewel, Adventure,  Allure, and Radiance. The only time we had $1/$3 games were on the Allure, rest were aleays $2/$5. Allure was also the only ship were every night you had tons of players. On all other ships, we've had enough people (6 or more) on only maybe 2 of the nights. In fact on the Radiance, all of us poker players all got together and had a private games in the game room instead.

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31 minutes ago, Jzx1103 said:

Texas Holdem cash games have been a hit or miss for me so far on RCL. I've been on Liberty, Jewel, Adventure,  Allure, and Radiance. The only time we had $1/$3 games were on the Allure, rest were aleays $2/$5. Allure was also the only ship were every night you had tons of players. On all other ships, we've had enough people (6 or more) on only maybe 2 of the nights. In fact on the Radiance, all of us poker players all got together and had a private games in the game room instead.

That’s a great idea, that 10% rake is a bit extreme. 

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2 hours ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

This looks like fun but frankly, I'm very surprised that you got away with doing this.  I'm sure if I ever tried to do this I would get caught and sent to the brig !

there's no cash on the table so i would be hard pressed to think any of the ship's personnel could say or do anything about it.   now if they witnessed the exchange of money that would be a different question.     never even occurred to me to get a live game going somewhere else other than the casino.  great idea!

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  • 3 years later...

I am just driving home in 2023 from a 5 night cruise on Adventure of the seas. There is one poker table but it’s always empty because of the astronomical rake. Cash game $100 minimum to $600 maximum buy in. 10% rake with FIFTEEN DOLLARS cap. ($15.00 ) So a $150 pot they take out $15 (vs like $3 or $4 in any other card room) . Having said that, the rake on the $150 tournament was 20% which isn’t that bad. Royal Caribbean would have a full table if they charged a normal rake. Poor short sighted clueless management. Makes you wonder how much the slots keep. 

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10 hours ago, Victor Mature said:

I am just driving home in 2023 from a 5 night cruise on Adventure of the seas. There is one poker table but it’s always empty because of the astronomical rake. Cash game $100 minimum to $600 maximum buy in. 10% rake with FIFTEEN DOLLARS cap. ($15.00 ) So a $150 pot they take out $15 (vs like $3 or $4 in any other card room) . Having said that, the rake on the $150 tournament was 20% which isn’t that bad. Royal Caribbean would have a full table if they charged a normal rake. Poor short sighted clueless management. Makes you wonder how much the slots keep. 

…and you don’t even get casino points for playing !  Poker has -0- risk for the house.  It’s impossible for them to lose money on poker but they charge a horrific rake and don’t give players any casino credit.  Stupid

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I find the blind schedule for the tournaments to be a ridiculously fast. They are really “turbo” tournaments and I don’t find those fun. I play to relax and be entertained and that shard to do when the game feels forced.  
 

Love the idea of a side game in the card room would be awesome. Tough to lug a suitcase of chips on board though!

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I managed to win one of the tournaments on Odyssey last summer. You’re right - the blinds are super fast and you largely have play super tight until you get a good enough hand to hopefully scoop one. Then once it’s down to 4 or so you can start playing more normally. 
 

To a certain degree I like that the game can be finished in 60-90 minutes. I enjoy poker but I’m not one to spend all day in the casino on a cruise, so somewhat of a happy medium.

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My experience with Poker is on the Allure, Anthem, and the Symphony. All of those ships have dedicated, live dealer, poker tables that are usually packed nightly starting at around dinner time. Don't expect to walk up 9pm and have a seat open. Anthem, I believe, had one table, the Oasis class ships run two, when busy, or at least they do at night. Same experience with astronomical rakes and cash game blinds. But hey it's quite literally the only game in town, so they do what they want. I don't think one important point was mentioned and that is they will put you on a list so that you can go gamble away your money elsewhere in the casino and they will call your name when a seat opens up. That was my experience on the Symphony and the Allure. 

As for tournaments they are usually too time consuming for me, even though I agree they are structured very much like turbo. They will run the POKER tournaments, at the available poker tables AND blackjack tables where you are playing poker tournament but sitting at blackjack table and the dealer faces the players. The semi and final tables are of course moved to the "real" poker tables. The opening rounds of the poker tournaments are run at odd times in the afternoons and I'm thinking that's just the casino's way of getting the gamblers into the casino during off hours. 

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My experience with the tournaments was slightly different, most recently on Harmony in July 2022 - there were two dedicated poker tables, I believe 10-seated. Both tables were filled but there were separate tournaments - tables were not combined and the payouts were separate and were based on the buy-ins at each table.

One thing that was kind of interesting was your seat was assigned in the order you signed up. So those of us that signed up the night before when registration opened were all next to each other, and anyone that signed up together were also next to each other. Kind of as you mentioned, they don't have a huge incentive to really improve/streamline the experience since its a pretty niche group they are catering to. In my experience the dealers have been good, though, especially since they are dealing with a lot of people that seemed to be playing live for the first time.

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I've honestly only seen $2/$5 games with live dealers. Played on Liberty, Allure, Harmony, Symphony, Wonder, Adventure,  Navigator, Independence. The rake was a whopping 10%. The kind of action you'll get really varies on who's sitting on your table. I've played in games were it was so chill that pots rarely exceed $100 and everyone only has $50 to $200 in front of them despite being a $2/$5 game. I've also played in games where multiple players have over $1k+ stack and don't even think about seeing a flop for under $50. My last cruise on Wonder I won my biggest pot ever, a $2.4k pot. Felt like every other pot exceeded $500

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