With Foxwoods to the north and Atlantic City to the south, our bet was that a cruise from New York on a beautiful new ship would find the casino crowded with VIP players. But on our September 2006 sailing on the Crown Princess, high-rollers were in short supply. That might have been for the best.

For as luck would have it, our Crown Princess cruise found Gatsby's casino for the first time using new continuous shuffling machines at all seven blackjack tables. Predictably, neither players -- nor dealers -- were very happy.

These machines, which casino personnel said are being installed on all Princess and Carnival cruise ships, eliminate the old concept of "shoes" and randomly insert discards back into the automatic shuffler after every hand. The play never stops (which ultimately is good, of course for the casino). As noted before, we don't like continuous shufflers (even though they do not, contrary to popular opinion, increase the house edge). Most dealers, who view shuffle time both as a bit of a break and a chance to further chat up players (hopefully resulting in better tips), were a lot less than enthused about the machines as well.

Gatsby's spacious and well organized casino has 17 table games in all, arranged in two banks. In addition to the blackjack, Gatsby's offers two roulette tables, one craps table, one face up blackjack, two Fun 21, one Let It Ride, one Caribbean stud table featuring a large progressive jackpot, and two three-card poker tables.

Most of the table games had a $5 minimum, and a couple of tables had a $3 minimum on the first night of the cruise -- an opening-night feature we have seen now on several Princess ships.

But while the lower stakes players were well covered, during the day there sometimes was no higher-stakes table available for VIP players -- even on a sea day. At night, there was at most one $25 table, and the number of players in the casino tended to thin out pretty quickly after midnight, with closing time generally coming around 3 am.

One of the interesting innovations now found on the Crown Princess -- as well as the ships of most other members of the Ocean Players Club -- is a Caribbean Stud game offering a separate chance to win a linked progressive jackpot. For a dollar side bet, a player drawing a royal flush in diamonds stood to win more than $100,000 on this sailing.

Between the main bank of tables and the casino bar, Gatsby's had two low-limit Texas Hold 'em tables that were busy evenings during the entire cruise.

For slot players, the Crown Princess has 296 machines, offering a wide range of opportunities to wager anywhere from a penny to $20. One bank of slots is linked to the Ocean Players Club progressive Megacash jackpot, which on this voyage climbed to more than $900,000.

The Crown Princess was also was featuring the BMW "Win a Car" promotion currently running on most Princess and all Carnival ships. Play a 2-cent slot machine (you actually have to play $1.80 to have a shot at the car) and you could win a sporty BMW Z4 convertible roadster, a BMW X3 sports utility vehicle or a BMW 325i sedan.

The dealers on the Crown Princess were very friendly and competent, but casino supervisors were not particularly attentive to members of the Ocean Players Club -- with comped drinks forthcoming only when a player asked.

Overall, slot players and those playing low-stakes table games appeared to be having a good time in the casino. But at present, given the lack of higher-stakes table games and the introduction of the continuous shuffling machines, we would not think Gatsby's the ideal cruise casino for VIP players.

We would hope Princess might ultimately decide to follow the lead of a competitor, which utilizes the continuous shuffling machines for its low-stakes games -- but uses the shoe and hand-shuffling for games of $25 and above.

--The Savvy Cruiser