September 7, 2007

Now we were well on the way home. This was a day at sea. The weather was a little improved. There wasn’t much in the way of scenery, but the sun came out a little.

The previous day’s excitement of watching the blackjack tournament convinced the rest of our party to enter the slot tournament. The previous day’s disappointment left us with no misconceptions about the role of skill. The slot tournament was similar format, qualifying rounds with the top seven going to the final. Competition was based on 100 spins with the machines set to what was clearly a more friendly mode. I scored about 2900 credits in 100 spins. My mother scored about 6600. Her score remained high on the leader board for most of the qualifying time. It wasn’t like the blackjack tournament where later qualifiers could attempt to get more aggressive. It was simply 100 spins.

My father wasn’t going to enter, but after watching a little, he decided to give it a try. He set the lowest score any of us saw all day. He scored about 800 credits in 100 spins. Of course if I could put $300 in a machine and win $800 as a bad score, I would be pretty happy.

A couple of qualifiers managed to hit the highest payout of 10000 credits and my mother ended up qualifying in fourth place. They chose machines in qualifying order and she chose the same machine she qualified on, oddly the same machine that provided my father such a low score. For the final, they covered the scores so no one was really sure how they were doing. From a spectator standpoint, it was tough to watch seven machines, but my mother hit a couple of big payouts and I knew she was doing well. One of the contestants was making a lot of noise, but I didn’t think she was doing as well as her cheering had people believing. When they removed the cards, we were thrilled to see that my mother had won the tournament. It was odd that it was so nerve wracking for all of us when the contest was really just random number generators set in motion by the press of a button. Still, it was pretty fun.

In the evening we went to see a comedy and singing act. The comedian was first and a little disappointing. He had a few bits that made me laugh, but mostly I wasn’t amused. I had low expectations for the singing so I was surprised that it was someone I recognized. It was a little strange to see the ‘greatest falsetto singer of all time’, well into his 60’s, still trying to sing hits from the 60’s. It could have been one of those shows where you pity the entertainer, but he handled his cruise ship duties with a reasonable level of dignity. He shared a few stories of his experiences in the business that were somewhat interesting. His performance appeared to be a bit of a struggle at times, but he still provided the original falsetto sound that made him somewhat famous. He didn’t stretch the performance painfully long, performing a couple of hits that had multiple artists record over the years and then closed with his personal hit, “Hey there, lonely girl”. It was a little weird, but still an interesting bit of musical history in a club environment.