As it is, between my wife’s time on line and my need to keep abreast of the goings on at Poker Player Newspaper—I’m the editor; I had to keep in touch—we wound up spending more money for a few hour’s online time than we do back home for a month’s worth of Verizon’s high-speed fiber optic Internet service.
The cruise was terrific … as usual. This was my fourth Mexican Riviera cruise and the eleventh or twelfth cruise I’ve taken. For us, the highlight was Puerto Vallarta. Although no stranger to the area, on each of my previous visits I took some sort of water based tour—snorkeling, sail boating, that sort of thing—but this time Bob Corona, who ran the poker room on the cruise, his wife Katt, Deirdre, and I grabbed a van on the pier for a really thorough tour of the area.
Puerto Vallarta is incredibly posh, with some homes going for more than $10 million, and that’s dollars, not pesos! It looks to be a terrific place to spend a week. The old section of the city, with its cobbled streets, restaurants, clubs, shops and street life is adjacent to the beach, a long walkway filled with sand sculptures and people just laying out in the warm sun. It’s surrounded by jungle, rivers, lots to do, and judging from some of the signs posted on café bulletin boards, rentals are not all that expensive, so who knows—we might decide to head off there for a week or so sometime in the future.
It’s too bad there are no casinos in Mexico. If you could put a casino anywhere in Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, with its myriad resorts, second homes, and lots of disposable income, would be an ideal spot. And yes, I’d love to run a poker room down there.
I gave two poker seminars during the days we were at sea, which were well-attended and judging from the feedback, players liked them. It’s tough gearing a seminar for an audience when there is a wide spectrum of poker-playing experience among the group. So I included a lot of material for beginners, along with some material for advanced players too. Many of the questions centered on making the transition form fixed-limit play to no-limit, so I guess there are still a lot of players who have yet to make the jump to big-bet poker.
My poker-playing run on this trip was amazing. For the entire duration of the trip I did not have a single losing session. I won every day I played, which was every day of the entire seven-day cruise. Deirdre, who really isn’t that avid a poker player, managed to knock me out of the second tournament in fourth place. Then she proceeded to use my chips to propel herself to a second place finish. A day later I evened the score, knocking her out and winning the third and final tournament event.
How often do husband and wife knock each other out on successive days at a tournament’s final table? I don’t know, but it can’t happen all that often.
As usual, we loved our cruise. It was a great week, poker every evening and all day during the three days we were at sea, and in the process we made a lot of new friends and managed to renew a few old acquaintances too. If you opt for a poker cruise vacation, you’ll have a grand time too.
You can book a poker cruise at
Sunshine Players Group
Lake Forest, California 92630
1-888-842-0212
Fax 1-949-206-1734
You’ll enjoy yourself if you do. I guarantee it.
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