I promised you a report about the gambling adventures on our European trip but it is not a long report because our idea of a vacation is a change from our normal routine – and that means a rest from our gambling “work.” 

Our first stop in Europe was Venice, and one of the attractions listed in the guidebook was the Casino Municipale (pictured below). We didn’t expect to find any good gambling there, but our friends agreed that it would be fun to at least look around. The men had to put on their sport coats (a requirement at most European casinos) and we had to show our passports and pay 10 Euros for admission, but they gave us each a 10 Euros slot machine ticket.

It was early afternoon when the four of us visited so we only got to see the part of the casino that had machines. The separate table game part did not open until later that afternoon. We wandered around, noticing that slot machines were abundant, but we did finally find a few video poker machines. And much to our surprise, we found familiar IGT machines, with Triple and Five Play, that at first glance seemed to have amazingly good paytables. The Jacks or Better were 9/6 and they had the Not So Ugly (NSU) deuce version. But a closer look at the WHOLE paytable – always a must – we found the fly in the ointment: The royal on all the games was a measly 1500 credits (instead of the usual 4000). 

We tried to use our free 10-Euro tickets on the VP, but found it only worked on the slot machines. So the four of us played through our 40 Euros and pull out a tiny profit for us to split. We decided to throw a few Euros at the VP machines, but soon found that it wasn’t any fun and quit – we were afraid we would hit a measly royal!! 

The only other gambling we did on the trip was in the ship’s casino. The video poker schedules were horrendous, just as we expected, but the blackjack rules were better than we had found on other ships. The game was dealt from an eight-deck shoe, but the dealer did not hit a soft 17 and you could double down on any two cards, split to four hands, and double down after split. 

So most evenings you would find us at a BJ table, meeting old friends or making new friends from the Treasure Island contingent. We no longer count cards – rusty from a lack of practice for many years – but on cruises we depend on basic strategy and $5/$10 limits to keep our losses low on this negative-expectation pastime while we just relax and enjoy the game and the camaraderie.   However, on this cruise there was an extra that turned this blackjack game into a positive-expectation gamble. Treasure Island funded a drawing every evening with nice prizes of $250-$3000 free play for when we got back to the TI casino. So it was fun to celebrate with the table every time someone got a blackjack and earned a ticket for the drawing.

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