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James (Akenhead) and I arrived back home yesterday after just over a month away in the Caribbean, culminating with the Ladbrokes Poker Cruise. We stayed behind in New York for a few days after the cruise was over to get some quality shopping in and had some good nights out. The cruise was good - very much unlike any other poker trip I've been on, I guess for obvious reasons. To start with I wasn't sure whether I'd go on one again but by the end I'm sure I would. The fact that there were a lot of us together at all times made it a much more fun trip and I got to know some people a lot better - people who you know to say hi to but never get to know much past that. The poker aboard was good, although it did have some bad points - such as paying 20% of the field for all tournaments. I can understand it for the main event but it makes it very hard to get a nice score - the $800 profit i made for bubbling the final table of the $1k event was a case in point - 11th out of about 220 and not even doubling your money? I did manage a 2nd place in the omaha event for $12,500 and a couple of decent cash wins to make it a profitable trip. The omaha event was particularly pleasing as it was only my 3rd ever omaha tournament, and after coming back from dinner with 400 chips, to get headsup with over 300k seemed like an achievement - even if I did manage to bluff them off headsup.... I almost repeated the comeback in the $1k, down to 600 with blinds 100/200 - mostly due to trying to bluff a woman on the very 1st hand :o) Back to back finals eluded me though and I had to settle for cheering on ActionJack after play stopped for the night after I busted out at 2am
I've come to the conclusion that the $1k tournament onboard must have been falsely advertised as a $10 rebuy. It's tough to find a comparison but if anyone has played any of the $1k nightly tournaments in Bellagio, this field must have been 10x weaker. With 4 tables left and in the money, me, James and Action Jack were all still in and commented in the break at how weak our respective tables were. Just before we got into the money, James got moved to my table. If this table hadn't have broken so quickly I think we'd have had all the chips in play between us, literally taking it in turns to pound on the weak. In one comedy hand I limped utg, James was counting out a raise but before he could put any chips in, next to act moved all in for a huge overbet. James quickly expressed his intention just to limp anyways and after everyone else had gotten out of the way he made a brave call with Kings, lol. James went out with 3 tables left after 3-betting a scandie all in with AK. Somehow he managed a call for most of his stack with 88 after not really having put that much in and made a flush with the 8 of spades on the Ace high 5 spade board :(
Success in the omaha came at a price in that I missed out on the much hyped England Vs Wales single table tournament. There was a "strong" welsh contingent on the ship and this event was sure to be a lot of fun with some great banter all week. Unfortunately in my absence my team went down to a shock defeat, with American/Persian/Londoner John Tabatabai taking the individual honours and Wales a resounding team victory on points. In fairness John has been through Wales once on a train. A rematch in Vegas has been set and I'll be doing my best not to miss out next time around
Back in London now and looking forward to putting some hours in online. I think my next trip away will probably be for the Irish Open. In between times there's a couple of GUKPTs to contend with, the 1st of which is in Walsall this week. After a quiet few tournaments my confidence is high again and I'm very much looking forward to this one and locking horns with some people who I haven't seen since last year.
Karl Mahrenholz
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