How Cruise Casinos Rate Table Games Play
Last reviewed: October 2026
Not one cruise line publishes a formula for how table play converts into points. Every line rates the same three inputs: game type, average bet and time played, all estimated by a pit supervisor watching the table. That estimate is the whole basis of your rating, and it is why table players cannot predict certificate progress the way slot players can.
If you play slots at sea, you know your earn rate. Club Royale is $5 of coin-in per point. Carnival’s Players Club is $2. Those are official published numbers. Walk twenty feet to a blackjack table and the published numbers vanish.
What the pit is actually recording
The three inputs are consistent across lines, even though the arithmetic is not disclosed:
| Input | How it is captured | Reliability |
|---|---|---|
| Game type | Observed, sets the assumed house edge | Solid |
| Average bet | Estimated by eye, sometimes spot-checked | Rough |
| Time played | Noted at sit-down and leave, often rounded | Rough |
Land casinos generally apply the same model, and the standard shape is average bet, multiplied by hands per hour, multiplied by an assumed house edge, multiplied by hours. That product is your theoretical loss, and comps get funded out of a slice of it. At sea, no line tells you the hands-per-hour figure it uses, the edge it assumes for your game, or the slice it pays back.
Why the numbers players report are so scattered
We have looked at player reports of what table play is worth on Princess, and they differ by more than an order of magnitude. Not by 20% or 50%. By a factor of ten or more between one report and another.
Some of that is genuine variation in how supervisors estimate. Some is players comparing different games, different bet spreads and different lengths of session and calling them all “table play.” Some is the fact that Princess’s Players Advantage earn rates are secondary data to begin with, since Princess does not publish them, and there is no tier ladder at all on that program.
The honest conclusion is that a table player at sea cannot forecast the rating. You can only observe what shows up on the kiosk afterward, and one sailing is a small sample.
What this means if you want certificates
Certificate ladders are point ladders. Royal Caribbean publishes a 13-rung ladder from 400 to 40,000 points in its monthly flyer. Celebrity’s Blue Chip Club publishes a 12-rung ladder from 600 to 40,000 points. Both are denominated in points, and points from tables are whatever the pit decides they are.
So a blackjack or craps player chasing a rung on the Club Royale certificate ladder faces a target they cannot compute their distance to. A slot player at $5 per point can. That is an argument for slot play if certificates are the goal, and it is worth weighing against the fact that measured cruise slot RTP lands in a rough 83% to 91% band, which is worse than a well-played blackjack game.
The tradeoff nobody markets
A double-deck blackjack game with 3:2 payouts, played with correct basic strategy, typically runs a house edge well under 1%. Cruise slots, on our measured band, run a house edge of roughly 9% to 17% of every dollar wagered. Playing $100 a hand at 60 hands an hour is $6,000 of action per hour at maybe 0.5%, an expected cost near $30. Getting $6,000 of slot coin-in costs an expected $500 to $1,000.
If your goal is to lose the least, tables win by a wide margin, and losing less usually beats earning comps. If your goal is a predictable certificate run, slots win because the earn rate is a published number. Those are different goals and it is worth being clear which one you are pursuing before you sit down. And check the 6:5 blackjack payout on the table felt first, because ship casinos sometimes offer it, and it wipes out most of the edge advantage.
What is not published
No line publishes: hands per hour assumed, house edge assumed per game, the comp reinvestment percentage, or the point conversion for table theo. Anyone who quotes you a firm “your table play earns X points per hour” figure is repeating folklore or reporting one supervisor’s habit on one ship.
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