I love the Virgin Voyages wristband. You don't have to carry a key or wallet.
I deisgned some some custom poker t-shirts and had them printed on Amazon. The first one had a fish on a heater, which is what they call a bad player who wins a lot of pots.
On the back is fish on a cooler, so if I start losing, I can flip the shirt around.
Bombpotosaurus was a cute little dinosaur image that Stones Live had before they stopped streaming.
Jaws with a joke about calling a full house a boat.
This one just had a bunch of funny poker moments from TV.
And one from Planes, Trains and Automobiles for the end of the cruise.
All of them.
Model of the ship.
I tend to wake up early, whereas poker players tend to stay up late. At 5am, there was still one table of $5/$10.
And one table of $1/$3.
They were mostly drunk and having a lot of fun.
The only other people up this early were the old guys registering for a seniors tournament.
Breakfast.
Model of the ship.
Ogii found a little table to put her laptop on in bed.
Sunrise with the wake.
Mom and Monica checking out the net.
Mom and me on it.
Neat couches.
Daily schedule.
Back.
My plan of what outfits to wear each day and evening.
And my plan for the day.
I took pictures of them, including the next days' as well, and put them on my phone so they'd be easy to glance at.
The basic internet was useable, around 3 Mbps.
Although it wouldn't load YouTube, probably not because of the speed, but because they likely blocked it.
The premium was around 10 Mbps and used Starlink.
They listed the structures of all the tournaments online. The problem with most of them for us is that they went to late, and we'd rather do the fun ship events than sit in the poker room in the evenings. But I thought we should play at least a few, and the tag team one might be fun.
Nobody playing cash poker at 11am, although a couple of guys want to.
Very sparkly shirt.
This little convenience store sells the hammocks on the balconies.
Along with batteries, which is what I needed.
The line to buy into the tournaments was very long.
I waited in line over 30 minutes.
At least I was able to buy in.
These two were dressed as famous race car drivers.
The tournament was in The Manor.
It had mirror walls along the entrance hallway.
A bar.
The main area with all of the poker tables.
The second floor.
Looking down. One issue everyone had with the tag team tournament was the switching format. At most of these, you can switch teammates whenever you want. However, at this one, they made you switch every 30 minutes.
A lot of people were quite annoyed they didn't let us know that ahead of time. There were some teams where they had obviously planned to have one person only play for a few minutes and then the other player whould play almost the entire tournament, like a guy beside me and his girlfriend. He was very good, and she barely knew how to play.
Since we only had 30 minutes between switches, when it was Ogii's turn to play, I had to run out and try to find some lunch.
I didn't have time for a sit-down restaurant, but thankfully even the pre-made food is still very good on Virgin.
Ogii playing. She's in the red had, which is reflected in the mirror above.
My turn to play.
Which means Ogii's turn to eat.
We were doing fairly well.
This guy had put his phone in his drink holder, which means he was holding his drink. Then he spilled it.
The rest of the table was fast to grab some napkins. Maybe next time, use the drink holder for your drink?
Dad, Mom, and Monica showed up to watch.
Monica in the mirrors.
If you sat upstairs, you got a better view of everything.
You can see them at the top-left.
The only other person who was sitting upstairs was the team member of the guy right beside Ogii, so we had fun discussing what we thought they had when they were in a hand, especially if they were both in a hand together.
The only problem with sitting up there was it could be a little hard to see exactly what the cards were.
My turn. The team mate of the woman to my left was sitting behind me.
Ogii texted me she was looking at my cards and then texting her team mate. I looked back at her a few times as I was looking at my cards, and she was looking at me but looked away very quickly. I was about to say something to the guy beside me, as she might be looking at his cards, too, and maybe even mention it to the tournament director, but the women were knocked out right afterwards.
Other than the food, another problem with the 30-minute forced switches was that Ogii, Mom, and Monica were going to the Bags and Bubbles event at 2:30pm. It worked out pretty well, though; Ogii left a few minutes early, so we only missed a few hands where nobody played our stack, and then she was back within 30 minutes so she could play again. There were a few people whose teammate wasn't there for much longer periods, so they got blinded down a bit.
They also grabbed some snacks.
Yummy.
Ogii having fun.
And winning.
Uh oh, Windows error.
Neat fingernails.
Over half of the teams have been knocked out.
We started with five tables, then combined them down to four, then three, then two.
To win tournaments, you have to get lucky a bunch of times. We played pretty well. For our last hand, Ogii shoved with tens, got called by AQ, and the guy hit a Q to knock us out. Great play by Ogii, but sometimes you're just not lucky enough the entire way through.
It was actually OK for us, though, because we were on the cruise more to do the fun events in the evenings than play poker. A problem with that plan was that many of the poker tournaments ended up going later than planned, often because they started late, so the fun events either got moved or even completely canceled, which was a bummer.
All in red.
There was a coupon for a free entry into an online tournament, but I prefer the in-person ones.
We made it onto the ClubWPT Instagram page for the pajama party.
The Diva singing.
Many different snacks.
One event that got moved was the comedy show. Instead of being in The Manor, it was at the Dock House, a more open area in the back. All of the older people were sitting over on this side...
... and all of the younger people were over here, including some women who didn't play poker but were just looking for rich men.
Which this comedian pointed out.
Second comedian.
Third.
This one got this old guy to come up and beatbox while she rapped, which was very fun.
They had the Grog Walk again because the other one was canceled. However, just like the first one, only Monica and I signed up for it. I guess they decided to do it anyway. I can understand all of the poker addicts not wanting to miss playing, but how about all of the people who came with them? Why aren't they here?
That's OK. AJ, Mya, and Ryan still took us around the boat, stopping for drinks at different bars.
Live music at the pool.
And another bar. Even though nobody else showed up, they were really fun.
Nice bathroom.
It's 10:30pm, and there's a long line of people wanting to play.
Mostly $1/$3, but also a fair amount of $2/$5 and some $5/$10, along with a few tables of PLO. It's our bedtime, though.