An independent magazine for people who do the work.

What this is

gammonfrog is the second of two sister sites, alongside dicefloor.com, covering the same beat for two different audiences. Same reporting, same interviews, same audio. Different voice on the page.

If you're 22 and on your first ship contract, this is the version we built for you. If you want the longer-form, more editorial read, that's at dicefloor.

What we cover

Casinos: the pit, the cage, the count room, careers, money, and how the work works.

Cruise: agencies, contracts, ships, what crew life is actually like month two.

Ports: what to do off the ship, on the actual budget you have.

Skills, hiring: the practical stuff. No filler.

Who writes this

A small group of current and former casino floor staff and cruise crew. Most of us are non native speakers. Drafts get edited by Claude for grammar and rhythm before publishing.

The judgment and reporting belong to us. If you read something that does not match what working on a floor or a ship is like, that is on us, not the editor.

How we earn

Some articles link to products on Amazon. We choose those links ourselves and place them inside the body of the article, usually underlined or bold, so unlike ads they don't interrupt the reading. As an Amazon Associate, gammonfrog earns from qualifying purchases. The links do not change the price you pay and they do not influence what we recommend.

Accounts & your data

An account here is just a code. Press one button on the Account page and you get sixteen random characters, generated on the spot. That code is the whole account. There is no signup form behind it, so we never see an email or a password.

Why create one: the code moves your saved articles and your listening queue between devices. Save an article on your phone, then enter the same code on a laptop. The same list shows up there. Without a code the site works the same way, and your saves and queue stay on the one device.

What we collect: the articles you saved and the items in your queue, plus the time they last changed, all filed under the code. That is the entire record. We can't tell who a code belongs to, and that is deliberate. If we never take your personal information, there is nothing for us to leak and nothing to sell.

Does the code recognize your device? No, it works in reverse. Your browser keeps the code on the device and shows it each time it syncs, like a ticket at the door. We hold no list of devices, so we can't tell your phone from your laptop, or either one from somebody else's. Nothing about the device itself is collected.

The catch: there is no recovery. Lose the code and whatever was attached to it is gone, and anyone who finds it can read your list. A device that is still linked shows its code on the Account page, and you can always forget a code there and generate a fresh one. Write yours down somewhere safe, a password manager or a note in a drawer, and treat it the way you'd treat a key.