Jack 'n Jill Tourney

On last week's cruise, I was able to participate in my first Jack 'n Jill tournament.  The lovely Julie Pham from Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada (shown in this picture from a previous cruise after winning a tournament that earned her a free cabin on this cruise and a seat in our WSOP main event qualifier), agreed to take a chance at this event with me.  I had a good feeling about our chances, as Julie can play pretty aggressively and I felt like I had a good read on many of our opponents after dealing to them all week.

We have experimented with different team tournament formats on previous cruises.  We used to always have a ladies tourney, and when we have had decent fields, they are well received.  I can remember the very first cruise, with poker professional Matt Dean dealing the single table event, all ten players remained in their seats for the entire tournament - until the very last person was eliminated.  Since these tourneys naturally exclude a large share of our customers, we decided to try a partner format.  The first one went very well, with two full tables.  Then we tried to market it as a James Bond tournament, scheduling it to coincide with everyone dressed to the nines on formal night, but that failed.  On another cruise, Dale threw together a last minute request and did a fine job entertaining the couples that wanted something different to do, but it was just a single table event.  

John and I discussed the problems with excluding players as the James Bond attempt seemed to discourage people who did not dress up from playing and couples events naturally excluded a lot of single cruisers.  So we started allowing "Jack 'n Jack" and "Jill 'n Jill" partnerships to improve participation, then we had one really strong team with two of the very best male players on the ship managed to go very deep and chop the prize money.  Some of the opposite sex teams seemed to have an issue with their being able to play without finding opposite sex partners.  I did consider that perhaps we shouldn't have let it happen.  I'm not sure it ever really came up in conversation, but it was bound to happen that eventually we would have a same sex team want to play that actually were real life partners.  This exact situation resulted in a pretty uncomfortable situation on this last cruise, and while everyone seemed to be acting in someone's best interest, our staff handled it poorly.

An openly gay gentleman in his fifties had been playing in our cash games all week and saw the flip chart sign-up sheet for the tournament.  He expressed an interest, signed up with John and prepaid the entry fee.  I don't think his partner was in the poker room very much, and may not have been much of a poker player.  In retrospect, this was a perfect opportunity for him to involve his significant other; just as other non-playing spouses have found this social event to be fun.  But, as the sign-up sheet started to approach three tables, some of the singles in the crowd were having a hard time finding suitable partners and asked about forming other "Jack 'n Jack" teams.  Since we had allowed them in the past, and John had already signed one up, he declared that it was fine and changed the flip chart, crossing out "Jack 'n Jill" and renaming it "Partners Tourney".  A few of the less enlightened members of teams that had already signed up declared that this wasn't fair and that the terms shouldn't be changed mid-stream.  Dale, completely unaware of the gay gentleman, who was playing in the cash game on the front table near the captain's desk, then confronted John about his change, and in his normally loud tenor, made a bit of a scene, defending the protesting teams - who were now threatening a boycott.  I was dealing on another table and had a front row seat to this public relations nightmare, but I'm not sure I could have gracefully avoided embarrassing myself as well.  The incident caused the gentleman to reconsider his involvement and somehow we made the matter even worse by trying to find female partners for them to couple with.  I guess our current staff missed the sensitivity training that Stephanie offered several cruises back.  Our guest went on to say that he didn't think his partner would be comfortable with that, demanded a refund, and ended up feeling shunned from an event that I am sure they both would have enjoyed.

The moral of this story is that poker is a social game which can and should be enjoyed by a wide variety of people.  The mixed gender team structure has a way of ensuring a blend at the tables, even if for a short period of time.  It should have nothing to do with sexual persuasion or bedroom partnerships, its just poker.  It's not intended to be exclusively married couples, or even dating couples, and while a guy and a girl on every team seems like a format that would encourage more participation, perhaps that is exclusionary as well.

We employed an innovative blind structure for this tourney.  Each blind level was 20 minutes long, and I set up the blinds clock to allow a 2-minute window in the middle of the blind period for partner swaps.  The dealers didn't break, they kept dealing, and teams could swap at any point in that window.  This allowed each player to get half a level of play at each blind round and not feel huge jumps in blind pressure.  Each player would play for 20 minutes and then have 20 off, so employing extra breaks did not seem necessary.  However, in retrospect, there is so much break time for the off partner, I think the blind levels should be a bit longer.  The off partner is encouraged to play in the cash games while not sitting at the table, and they can play the same cash game chip stack or each put their own chips on different tables.  This can benefit the house as you will have several tables in action that seem full, but are actually short-handed which results in more hands per hour.

In the end, I enjoyed the opportunity to play.  It is the one event that seems naturally fitting for staff members to become involved and partner up with single cruisers.  We ended up letting too many dealers get involved and I had to swap in and out of a dealers box with BC during the periods when our partners were playing our respective chip stacks.  This kept me from being able to watch Julie play, but we still had fun.  During the first blind period, I got monster cards out of position and probably played too tightly.  She made up some ground for us during her first period and then I was able to steal a couple of pots and we seemed to be on a bit of a roll.  We survived the first table break and several tough teams went down before us.  But after a few bad situations, we were crippled and I had to push our small stack in with inferior cards, busting us just before being gobbled up by blind pressure.  I felt like I let all of Canada down when it was over.