Party Poker Million Cruise - Part 2
The start of the Party Poker Million III tournaments got started on Monday, with half the field competing on Monday and the other half on Tuesday, due to the size of the tournament. I won't be reporting a lot on the tournament since I was busted out boring and early, so I was mostly playing in the side games.
Poker - It's what this cruise is about right?
Pictures of waiting list and poker room
Joining the wait list for the games was something else on the cruise. Being a poker cruise, you can imagine that everyone is here with the intention of one thing: poker. As such, there were games spread from $2-4 all the way to $30-60 and even a late night private $300-$600 no-limit game that occurred outside of the poker room. More on that later.
The most popular games seemed to be the middle limit games, which were $6-12 and $10-20. The lower limits while filled, weren't nearly as popular. Seeing how all the players on this cruise were winners in the Semi-Finals of the Party Poker Million, it should say something as to the overall skill level of the players on the ship. That being said, there were a good number of bad players on the ship, many of whom I was fortunate enough to play with on my tables :) Funny enough, when I was in the Party Poker Press Room talking to the heads of the Party Poker, a wife and husband team came in and started talking to some of the other Party Poker staff, mentioning that the cruise was great and that the competition on the boat for $30-60 was just as bad as it was online. This made the Party Poker guys grin a bit awkwardly while I was trying my best not to bust up laughing.
One of the first tables I sat down at was a $4-8 table, since the line for the $6-12 was just flowing off the board and $10-20 was even worse. The guy to my left was freshly minted out of the tournament and an overtly tight player while the person to my left was very loose and semi-aggressive. If your poker knowledge is up to par, you'll know that this is definitely not an ideal position to be in, so I definitely was waiting for someone to leave so that I could change seats. There was one player at the table who I respected and seemed like a solid player, the rest were mediocre players at best with one complete fish, who drew everything to the river.
The guy to my left was pretty interesting to talk to however, so we exchanged some banter back and forth about the tournament and what not. Of course as the day wore on the usual 'I can't believe he called me with XX!!' did start to get a bit tiresome as more and more players were being knocked out of the tournament. The rest of the table consisted of all sorts of different players, but at least most of them stayed in unlike the online Party Poker games we're accustomed to eh?
I ended up playing $4-8 most of the day and ended up breaking even for the most part. I would go on and play $4-8 and some $6-12 for the rest of the cruise and ending up breaking even for the entire cruise. Not good, but not bad I suppose, as there's always Party Poker.com to feed my poker need :)
Party Poker Million Tournament
The poker tournament itself took place on the right side of the poker room. You can see the projection screen they put up in the top left photo, which kept the players informed of the blinds, level and how much time remaining until the next blinds increase.
While each day started out with approximately 275 players, each day only ended with 90, so only a third of the players were remaining by Day 4. On Day 3, these players were then whittled down to the Final 10 who would then compete in the World Poker Tour event, which would be televised on TV.
I ended up watching a lot of the play on Day 4, as the side games were just flooded with players, since most of the players had busted out of the tournament by then. One particular hand that I remember watching involved Scotty Ngyuen and Daniel Negreanu and I think Chris Hinchcliffe was at the table too, but not involved in the hand. Anyhow the hand went like this: there's 6 players, the blinds posted, Daniel raises from UTG (remember, limit game so it's just one raise) and it's now to Scotty who is in the cutoff. He's being Scotty and stacking his chips with fluid dexterity as he ponder's Daniel's raise.
It's really amazing watching Scotty's dexterity with his chips as he perfectly stacks them while analyzing a hand. I really wonder if he's even wondering sometimes or just amused at stacking his chips and killing time before he makes his move. In the end, Scotty raises his cards up and shows it to Mike Sexton standing behind him. A few of us in the audience are able to see his hand, which is AK suited. Scotty hesitates and ponders a bit more, looks at Daniel and then mucks his cards.
Daniel ends up playing the hand with the SB who calls. The hand is bet to the river, where Daniel then promptly turns over AA. A number of people in the audience were going 'Holy shit!' at Scotty's ability to muck AKs here. Although Scotty wasn't very short-stacked at the time, his stack was at the level that it could have been hurt if he had to call to the river. With Daniel raising from UTG, it's quite a feasible fold in my eyes, but still one that is pretty tough to do. However, Scotty is known for his ability to fold tough hands, which is one of the reasons he's as good as he is.
Destination: Mexico
One of the things that most of the poker players probably didn't like was the fact that we couldn't play Poker while docked in Mexico. This was probably due to the fact that while docked, we were under Mexican jurisdiction instead of at sea, where it was international waters.
Not having been to Mexico however, I didn't mind at all when we docked at Cabo San Lucas and then La Paz the next day as part of the Party Poker Cruise. It was time to test out all that Spanish I learned in high school and see if I could actually locate some cerveza and el bano when I needed it :)
Here are pictures of Cabo San Lucas, which is really more of a tourist town than anything. This actually isn't something that I like a lot (tourist towns) because I like seeing another culture that isn't trying to serve up to a culture I'm familiar with. So while it is somewhat nice that I can order a Whopper from the Burger King in English, I'd rather be ordering churros en espanol para una senorita, si? In any sense, Cabo was a pretty town, with nice waters and a nice beach. At the time, it was also spring break, so there were plenty of college girls and guys walking around, so it was definitely the party like atmosphere.
In La Paz, the city was very different, even though tourism was big in La Paz as well. The city was much more 'Mexican' and they didn't take US dollars at the restaurants you went to, unless you were on the beachfront. I had a much funner time in La Paz, wandering around the streets and checking out the shops over there. One of the best drinks that I had on the trip was a strawberry drink / shake from one of the beachfront ice cream shops. The best thing was that it only costed 10 pesos too for that matter, or about one US dollar.
Here's some departing pictures of La Paz. In the top left, you can see my immature humor when I spotted a store called "Tittys Botique". I couldn't resist :)
PPM III - Part 1 | PPM III - Part 2 | PPM III - Part 3
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