Playing Poker on a Cruise Ship

Here's an amusing little story from the WPT Mexican Cruise with Daniel Negreanu and Erik Lindgren.

Card Player Magazine, one of the premier poker magazines out of Las Vegas, enlists Linda Johnson (The First Lady of Poker) as the honcho on Card Player Cruises. She has run more than 40 of them and knows her business. More than that, she also knows Card Player Magazine, having been the owner for eight years prior to 2001. She sold out, but kept the rights to the cruises. Good idea!

Her poker cruises go where most cruises go: Transatlantic, the Mexican Riviera, the Caribbean, Alaska, Russia, and South America. On a recent Mexican cruise, most of the players were beginners, booking to see what the poker phenomenon was all about and to pick up some tequila, high quality silver jewelry, and perhaps a sombrero.

There is another kind of poker played on another kind of cruise event that Linda also runs. In conjunction with the World Poker Tour (WPT), an annual No Limit Texas Hold em tournament has been held on chartered just for the poker gang - Holland America ships.

In 2004, Erick Lindgren beat his best buddy, Daniel Negreanu, to snag a million dollar prize on a WPT Mexican cruise. Negreanu didn't hold his defeat against Lindgren: soon after, Erick was Daniel's best man at his wedding to Lori.

Back to the cruise and Erick's victory: to celebrate, he ordered drinks for the house in The Crow's Nest Bar on the ship, the beautiful MS Ryndam. It seemed like a good idea at the time, maybe until Erick woke up the next morning (or was it afternoon?), to discover a receipt for a $22,000 bar tab by his bed. Ouch!!