Our general poker room philosophy: CPC has a very friendly cardroom. We go out of our way to make sure every CPC poker room experience is a great one. We enforce a strict no-abuse policy; in fact, there is probably more laughter in our poker room than in any other poker room in the world. We run our poker room in much the same way that a brick and mortar cardroom does. Our players can play as much or as little poker as they want. Players must book with us in order to use our cardroom. We book an adequate number of dealers and bring enough tables to serve our customers so that they don’t have to wait long to get into poker games. We bring an average of 12 tables per cruise but our less heavily booked cruises (usually longer, more expensive cruises) may only have 3-4 tables, while our bigger cruises may have 25+ tables.
Demographic: Our average age player is probably in their 50s, but we have customers ranging in age from 18 to mid-90s. Most of our cruisers are recreational players (probably 90%). About 1/3 of our players are female which is much higher than in other cardrooms.
Cash game mix: We try to please our customers so each cruise will have a slightly different game mix but there are certain cash games that are standard on almost every cruise and they are $1-$3 no-limit, $4-$8 Omaha high low split, and low-limit hold’em. We often have$2-$5 no-limit, mixed games, and higher limit games.
Tournaments: Many players prefer tournaments to cash games. We usually have our tournament schedule for each cruise listed so please check the schedule. You should know that we have a variety of buy-in amounts and various types of tournaments on almost every cruise (our annual exotic cruise has fewer tournaments than our domestic cruises). Our lowest buy-in tournaments are in the $80-$100 buy-in range. Some of our cruises have a main event with buy-ins from $250-$1100. When we have a main event, we run satellites for that event. A satellite is a smaller buy-in tournament where 10% or 20% of the field wins a main event entry by finishing in the top 10 or 20% of the field.
We offer various types of tournaments: Survivor tournaments (the tournament plays down to 20% of the starting players and then it stops and all remaining players split the prize money evenly), bounty tournaments (in addition to prize money, players can also win a designated bounty amount when they knock another player out of the tournament), and multi-table tournaments (these are longer tournaments that are played down to one player).
All of our tournaments follow TDA rules (TDA stands for Tournament Directors Association and it means that we follow the same set of rules that most other cardrooms follow). We also have a staff appreciation add-on (at the beginning of the tournament, players can elect to pay a small fee which goes to the staff and in exchange for that, they get extra starting chips in the tournament). The staff add-on is generally $10 or $20 in most events and this is done in many cardrooms in the industry as a way of enhancing the tips that the staff make).
Our tournaments start on time. They vary in how long they take to run based on how much the buy-in is and what type of tournament it is. The less expensive the tournament, the less time they take. Most of our Survivor tournaments last 2.5-3.5 hours. Satellites last about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Multi table tournaments last 6-8 hours. Main event tournaments can last 1-4 days.
Beginner lessons: We offer free beginner lessons taught by Linda and Jan. The beginners have a lot of fun and after the lesson, they can play in a $20 buy-in cash game that is a lot of fun. We don’t let advanced players play with the beginners…we “protect” the game.Seminars: We offer free seminars taught by Linda and Jan and occasionally other pros on some cruises. We also offer “tales behind the scenes and fun stories” on some cruises.
Misc: We have food in the cardroom that is free and self-serve (sandwiches, fruit, cheese plates, pastries and desserts, etc). We also have free coffee/tea service and juice or lemonade. We usually open at 9am and stay open until late (until everyone quits). We are open while at sea and closed in port and during first seating dinner. We have a casual dress code in the poker room. Our group eats together during first dinner seating unless they request late seating. We have open seating at dinner time.
Newsletter: Everyone who has booked on the next cruise will receive an emailed Deck Gazette just prior to a cruise, this explains a lot about the ship and cruise. Any changes made to the poker schedule will be in the Deck Gazette.
