Anyone Here Wise To Cruise Ship Casinos?
Nov 2, 2011, 9:02 am
#31
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: NHK
Programs: UA Premier, Marriott Rewards Gold
Posts: 118
I find that if I play in the off hours on the outbound leg of the cruise, it's easier to win. I play only blackjack. I find the dealers play your hand if you let them and things are generally looser. On the return portion they tighten up and they are no longer interested in "helping" you. IMHO they try to sucker you in during the beginning of the cruise so that you win and then tell everyone how well you did - when folks start coming in and trying to take advantage of the "loose" casino WHAMMMOO - they getcha!! By that time you are trying to get even and then ... well ... that a losing strategy!
I play for fun, with a tight budget and once I have their money I NEVER GIVE IT BACK. It may sound crazy but I always make a few bucks to pay for a few excursions or twice made enough to cover the whole cruise by just playing during the outbound leg.
I play for fun, with a tight budget and once I have their money I NEVER GIVE IT BACK. It may sound crazy but I always make a few bucks to pay for a few excursions or twice made enough to cover the whole cruise by just playing during the outbound leg.
Nov 8, 2011, 11:21 pm
#32
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 118
Cruise casino dealers
Cruise dealers are often not professional dealers - they may also have other responsibilities as staffing is tight on-board. On the only cruise I was on, a waitress suited up as a craps dealer at my table. She was terrible (for the house) - forgetting to pay, wrong payouts, paying twice for one roll, once she even left all bets up after a 7-out. Just had to gently remind her when the mistake went against me.
It was funny to see how the motion of the ocean changed how the dice would roll.
A BJ dealer could probably help with making sure people are using basic strategy correctly, and when they have to peek at the hole card on tens or aces up, they could suggest a course of action. You may want to hit that 17 when the dealer already has 18. Plus of course wrong payouts or forgetting to take losing bets.
It was funny to see how the motion of the ocean changed how the dice would roll.
A BJ dealer could probably help with making sure people are using basic strategy correctly, and when they have to peek at the hole card on tens or aces up, they could suggest a course of action. You may want to hit that 17 when the dealer already has 18. Plus of course wrong payouts or forgetting to take losing bets.
Mar 5, 2013, 10:34 pm
#33
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 6,978
The only warning would be slot machines. In the USA the slots are regulated so that the casino don't ripped you off too badly. Ranging from 90% to 95% return. However, since cruise ship slots are not regulated, they can really ripped you off by offering just 80% return.
As for table games, the odds are the same in Vegas or on a ship (unless cruise ships cheats.) Black Jack will be Black Jack. Play by the book, and you will generally do fine (unless you have bad luck and play on a really really bad shoe, then you're done in 10 minutes.)
As for table games, the odds are the same in Vegas or on a ship (unless cruise ships cheats.) Black Jack will be Black Jack. Play by the book, and you will generally do fine (unless you have bad luck and play on a really really bad shoe, then you're done in 10 minutes.)
Mar 13, 2013, 3:55 pm
#34
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Sacramento, CA, US
Posts: 2,229
My first experience in a casino on a cruise ship (3rd cruise for me) was recently on the Crown Princess. I obtained $40 in chips (for which I will receive miles, as it was charged to my UA card) and proceeded to bet $1 on 0/00 (Roulette) each time, without variation. Less than 15 minutes later I walked away with $59 (net $19) after these numbers came up twice. Not bad.
Mar 19, 2013, 1:57 pm
#35
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: DTW
Programs: Dirt Status w/ All
Posts: 5,040
Lots of gambling misinformation in this thread - for cruise ships or land casinos.
Bad Blackjack Players - they are just as likely to help you vs. hurt you. Sure they may take the dealers bust card when they hit a 15 against a 6, but that also just might have set up the deck to give you a blackjack on the next three hands. Cards are random, and your odds don't change based on the play of others. When I run into a crotchety old guy berating a new player, I love to split 10s on occasion just to annoy them
.
Dealer Hole Card - Any dealer that tipped off the table to the hole card would be fired rather quickly for doing so. I believe that the mirror setup only lets them know if they have an ace/10 down anyway. Even if they help you with basic strategy, the house still has the edge. The only way to win would be if you could count cards, and the use of multiple decks, minimum penetration into the decks, and the eye in the sky watching for the obvious bet increase that would indicate a player friendly deck make it virtually impossible. Bad/new dealers can save you a few bucks here and there - I ran into one on a river boat one time that kept pushing if I lost and payed on a couple pushes. I quickly learned to keep my mouth shut unless they were messing up in the house's favor.
Roulette - there is no system that can beat roulette (or any game) if the wheel is properly functioning and not biased. There are 38 spots (1-36, 0, 00) and a winner pays 35:1 so the house edge is always there. I did manage to win quite a bit at a church carnival one time on a biased "wheel of fortune" - the vertical type. It was quite obvious that the wheel was biased to one side as it would actually speed up when the heavy part rounded the top. You might find that at a weekend fair in a parking lot tent - you won't find it in a major casino.
Slots - there is no national law that mandates slot payout percentages, but some states or locales might have them. Here is some information. Even if there is some mandate like 75% (Nevada's), you could have a 75% machine sitting next to an identical 99% machine. Only the casino knows the paytables for each machine. Typically a higher denomination machine will have a better payout since the maintenance of the machine is a lower percentage of the amount of cash that flows through it.
I would expect cruise casinos to always have a higher house edge vs. land based just due to supply and demand. They are the only game in town and you are trapped, so they can charge more. If you are in Vegas, you can walk 60 seconds to the casino next door, so the competition keeps the edge lower. I was shocked to find full play Jacks or Better video poker in Greektown Detroit last week. With only three casinos here they usually limit the payouts, but I found a few machines tucked into a far away corner. That's a 99.5% return, so my entertainment money goes farther. Of course a beer costs $5, unlike Vegas - another reason lack of supply keeps things expensive.
Bad Blackjack Players - they are just as likely to help you vs. hurt you. Sure they may take the dealers bust card when they hit a 15 against a 6, but that also just might have set up the deck to give you a blackjack on the next three hands. Cards are random, and your odds don't change based on the play of others. When I run into a crotchety old guy berating a new player, I love to split 10s on occasion just to annoy them
.Dealer Hole Card - Any dealer that tipped off the table to the hole card would be fired rather quickly for doing so. I believe that the mirror setup only lets them know if they have an ace/10 down anyway. Even if they help you with basic strategy, the house still has the edge. The only way to win would be if you could count cards, and the use of multiple decks, minimum penetration into the decks, and the eye in the sky watching for the obvious bet increase that would indicate a player friendly deck make it virtually impossible. Bad/new dealers can save you a few bucks here and there - I ran into one on a river boat one time that kept pushing if I lost and payed on a couple pushes. I quickly learned to keep my mouth shut unless they were messing up in the house's favor.
Roulette - there is no system that can beat roulette (or any game) if the wheel is properly functioning and not biased. There are 38 spots (1-36, 0, 00) and a winner pays 35:1 so the house edge is always there. I did manage to win quite a bit at a church carnival one time on a biased "wheel of fortune" - the vertical type. It was quite obvious that the wheel was biased to one side as it would actually speed up when the heavy part rounded the top. You might find that at a weekend fair in a parking lot tent - you won't find it in a major casino.
Slots - there is no national law that mandates slot payout percentages, but some states or locales might have them. Here is some information. Even if there is some mandate like 75% (Nevada's), you could have a 75% machine sitting next to an identical 99% machine. Only the casino knows the paytables for each machine. Typically a higher denomination machine will have a better payout since the maintenance of the machine is a lower percentage of the amount of cash that flows through it.
I would expect cruise casinos to always have a higher house edge vs. land based just due to supply and demand. They are the only game in town and you are trapped, so they can charge more. If you are in Vegas, you can walk 60 seconds to the casino next door, so the competition keeps the edge lower. I was shocked to find full play Jacks or Better video poker in Greektown Detroit last week. With only three casinos here they usually limit the payouts, but I found a few machines tucked into a far away corner. That's a 99.5% return, so my entertainment money goes farther. Of course a beer costs $5, unlike Vegas - another reason lack of supply keeps things expensive.
Mar 19, 2013, 2:38 pm
#36
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 1,154
I was shocked to find full play Jacks or Better video poker in Greektown Detroit last week. With only three casinos here they usually limit the payouts, but I found a few machines tucked into a far away corner. That's a 99.5% return, so my entertainment money goes farther. Of course a beer costs $5, unlike Vegas - another reason lack of supply keeps things expensive.
Mar 24, 2013, 8:20 pm
#37
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: YVR, HNL
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Wow, so much misinformation here, I was a dealer/supervisor/pit boss/manager on a cruise ship for years. In addition to the comments made by tev999 above about dealers (no way could/would a dealer tip the table to a hole card etc), the odds at table games are the same as a lot of land-based casinos. On dice/craps, we paid the same payouts on the numbers, offered various odds behind the line and paid the the same center bets. On roulette, the odds are fixed, 35-1 straight up, 17 for a split etc., blackjack is blackjack - even money for a win, 3-2 for a blackjack etc. so how can it be any worse than a land-based casino? Only difference could be the number of decks used. we used 6. Single deck blackjack has better odds for ovpbvious reasons but that has nothing to do with land vs cruise based. it is a game choice,Slots are another matter which I have no knowledge of.
Dealers are absolutely professional dealers. One must have experience or they won't be hired as a dealer. Cashiers could be trained to be dealers after a certain time on board. I was the trainer for my cruise line for a long time. Casino is a completely separate department from wait staff so there is no way an untrained waitress would be put on a casino table, no way. We had no other duties, other than as seamen for boat drills, than as dealers in the casino. If you work for casino, that's it. You don't wait tables or serve drinks, different department, different rank (staff vs crew).
Security is huge and that goes for staff as well as punters. Any dealer suspected of any form of cheating was removed from the ship at the next port and investigated. If caught red-handed, they were either removed at the next port and escorted back to our home port, or arrested once we arrived back in our home port, under house arrest on board.
As for tips, they are 100% kept by the dealers. They were counted and divided up every single night by the number of working dealers, handed out at the end of the week. The counting and disbursement of tips was heavily supervised. Some lines include supervisors, housemen and cashiers etc. in the dealer tip pool and give them an equal share, others rely on the dealers to tip these other casino workers individually and all did in the many years I worked there as we valued their contributions to keeping our punters happy. A happy customer is a tipping customer.
There is so much more but those are the most glaring errors.
Dealers are absolutely professional dealers. One must have experience or they won't be hired as a dealer. Cashiers could be trained to be dealers after a certain time on board. I was the trainer for my cruise line for a long time. Casino is a completely separate department from wait staff so there is no way an untrained waitress would be put on a casino table, no way. We had no other duties, other than as seamen for boat drills, than as dealers in the casino. If you work for casino, that's it. You don't wait tables or serve drinks, different department, different rank (staff vs crew).
Security is huge and that goes for staff as well as punters. Any dealer suspected of any form of cheating was removed from the ship at the next port and investigated. If caught red-handed, they were either removed at the next port and escorted back to our home port, or arrested once we arrived back in our home port, under house arrest on board.
As for tips, they are 100% kept by the dealers. They were counted and divided up every single night by the number of working dealers, handed out at the end of the week. The counting and disbursement of tips was heavily supervised. Some lines include supervisors, housemen and cashiers etc. in the dealer tip pool and give them an equal share, others rely on the dealers to tip these other casino workers individually and all did in the many years I worked there as we valued their contributions to keeping our punters happy. A happy customer is a tipping customer.
There is so much more but those are the most glaring errors.
Last edited by Finkface; Mar 24, 2013 at 8:27 pm
Mar 25, 2013, 10:50 am
#38
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On my last Carnival cruise, I played 1/2 no-limit hold'em on a PokerPro electronic table. In the evenings, all 10 spots were pretty much filled from 7pm well past when I usually left (midnight).
There is a slight learning curve, but just watching the players for 10 minutes before you sit down lets you know how to work all of the touchscreen functions.
I do like how quickly the game ran, and everyone that played was fun to talk to. It also helped the majority of the players were terrible--you'd win a pot 90% of the time with any post-flop aggression. Yes, the rake is high, but I still won enough money in five nights to pay for all of our room charges for the whole eight-night cruise.
There is a slight learning curve, but just watching the players for 10 minutes before you sit down lets you know how to work all of the touchscreen functions.
I do like how quickly the game ran, and everyone that played was fun to talk to. It also helped the majority of the players were terrible--you'd win a pot 90% of the time with any post-flop aggression. Yes, the rake is high, but I still won enough money in five nights to pay for all of our room charges for the whole eight-night cruise.
Mar 25, 2013, 11:00 am
#39
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Edited to add: ignore the above. Corrected below. My apologies.
Last edited by pseudoswede; Mar 26, 2013 at 10:04 am
Mar 25, 2013, 1:02 pm
#40
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Mar 25, 2013, 2:39 pm
#41
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Mar 27, 2013, 1:48 am
#42
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Arizona
Posts: 5,689
The only game I played was on RCL and shut down long ago. Get $2,000 a day on my ship card without any surcharge or cash advance charge and play one hand and walk away with a lot of dough and free SPG starwood points. Now almost every Royal Caribbean and Celebrity ship charges 3% minimum and will still shut you down if you do not play.
Mar 30, 2013, 7:21 am
#43
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: louisville,ky usa
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"BlackJack is Blackjack"? No, not really. There are a variety of rule differences from house to house that can favor the house or the player. For example, the rule on what number a dealer must hit the house, early surrender, splitting again, double down after splitting, double down on three cards, just to name a few that come to mind.
Mar 30, 2013, 11:50 am
#44
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: YVR, HNL
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"BlackJack is Blackjack"? No, not really. There are a variety of rule differences from house to house that can favor the house or the player. For example, the rule on what number a dealer must hit the house, early surrender, splitting again, double down after splitting, double down on three cards, just to name a few that come to mind.
Here is the sentence from my original post: "On roulette, the odds are fixed, 35-1 straight up, 17 for a split etc., blackjack is blackjack - even money for a win, 3-2 for a blackjack etc. so how can it be any worse than a land-based casino?"
Last edited by Finkface; Mar 30, 2013 at 12:01 pm
Mar 30, 2013, 6:04 pm
#45
Join Date: Jul 2003
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Your post seemed to suggest that as the payout was the same, one's chances of winning at blackjack were the same in every casino. Not that I would ever play blackjack or any other casino game- but I did work as a dealer and then a floor supervisor in a poker room in a casino for several years.