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I just returned from a week-end in the Reno Hilton. I got rooms for
cheap at the last minute through Hotwire, where they were listed as
4-star with
casino/shuttle/restaurants/pool/fitness/spa/broadband/children/golf/tenn
is/business/laudry (this should help people recognize it on hotwire).
Weekday hotwire rates seem to be about $30 a night.
About the hotel: the room we got (15th floor north wing) was spacious
and clean, but felt sad and aging. The air in the room was pretty dry.
The hotel struck me as noisy (which is not something I usually
notice), as if the doors were totally ineffective to stop sounds. The
elevators for floors 8-17 were sometimes surprising long to respond to
a call when the hotel was busy, and the green/red patterns painted on
the elevator doors were painful to watch for any period of time. I
very much prefer the tower rooms at the Atlantis, especially those in
the newest tower. The hotel is far from everything, i.e. if you don't
have a car you're pretty much stuck (it's much more isolated than
Atlantis as Atlantis has many stores within walking distance and
Hilton has nothing).
About the non-gambling parts: this is the best hotel I've seen in Reno
as far as non-gambling is concerned. There's a wide choice in terms of
food, and what we sampled (Andiamo, Asiana, buffet, Java Coast) was
very good. Specifically, the sushi at Asiana was very decent, but
eating all-you-can-eat at the sushi bar isn't the cheapest sushi
option unless you have a huge appetite, especially for dinner ($19 for
all-you-can-eat, vs $3 for 2-piece nigiri and $5 for a roll when
ordered at a table). Pizza at Andiamo was good, large and soft such
that eating half a pizza for dinner would fill a stomach and leave
enough for a breakfast for 2 the next morning. Live rock music in the
Garage was very pleasant. The Fun Quest downstairs had half a dozen
pinball machines, all in a decent shape, varying from well-maintained
machines from the 90s to brand-new current machines, all set to be
easy to play and with a low replay value (a $2 5-credit package lasted
me 17 games and more than 90 minutes on the Simpsons machine).
About the players club: the data is tracked in whole cashback dollars
and whole comp dollars. It is transparently available through the comp
kiosks in the casino, if you have a pin (where it is listed in whole
dollars) or by inserting the card in any machine (where comps are
listed in dollars and cashback is listed at the rate of 10 points per
dollar). When listed in points, cashback is still only listed in whole
dollars, i.e. multiples of 10 points. It doesn't seem to be possible
to redeem comps or cashback by less than $10 at a time. In my case
comps seemed to accumulate about 3 times faster than cashback, and the
kiosks listed a comp rate of $1:$1, though I didn't track my coin-in
so I don't know the exact rate. The system felt reasonably transparent
to me, definitely much more than at the Atlantis.
General gambling notes: table minimums were pretty high. Craps was $5,
sometimes $10, with 3-4-5 odds. Pai-Gow poker was never lower than
$10. The inventory of slot machines (reels and VP) felt old, with few
TITO machines, some VP without touchscreen, and some machines that
looked so old that the slots to feed bills and the player card were on
appendages rather than being part of the machines themselves. The
high-limit slot area isn't very differentiated from the rest of the
casino, it is very open, with no premium drinks or food, and
slow-to-respond slot attendants. VP in the high-limit room is mostly
at the front (or right outside), and reel slots at the back, along
with a $500 blackjack table in the far corner. Nobody asked me any
questions as I walked in and played single-hand JoB on a 50-play
machine.
General VP notes: the high-limit room is a paradise for the high-limit
9/6 JoB player, with 26 machines. However for the player on a limited
budget the choices are far more limited and the Reno Hilton can't be
recommended. It's worth mentioning that the bar-tops at the bar
outside restaurant row have a lot of progressive games where (during
my stay, especially at the end) the jackpots were unusually high, some
actually hitting the 10000-coin ceiling. There's some JoB, DW, BP, JW
and DDB in 25c, and a different mix in $1. Those might be worth
playing after a holiday week-end.
VP inventory (notice that I didn't take full notes on all types of
machines - specifically I didn't look for NSUD and I didn't take notes
on every prog machine. I only have full notes on PKM and JoB).
PKM: The (4) 25c PKM Game Makers "near sports book" are MIA. The (4)
$1 PKM Game Makers "in an island to themselves toward the Sportsbook
area" are at the corner of the change station closest to the sports
book. The (4) 25c PKM Game Makers "near Keno area" are labelled "Keno
Plus" (I think the full wording is "Game Maker Keno Plus" but I'm not
entirely sure). All PKM machines are coin-op MG uprights.
9/6 JoB: The $1 bartops "@ Garage Bar" are still there. All the rest
of 9/6 is in the high-limit room (I think that most of it is coin-op
but I only list explicitly the ones I'm sure about). Here's the full
9/6 JoB inventory of the high-limit room:
-(4) 3-play/5-play $1/2/5/10/25 MG/MD coin-op slant-tops in the
front-left of the high-limit room.
-(2) 50-play 25c/50c/$1 MG/MD coin-op slant-tops in the front-left of
the high-limit room.
-(4) 3-play $1/2/5/10/25 MG/MD uprights in the front-right of the
high-limit room.
-(4) 3-play/5-play $2 MG uprights in the front-center of the high-limit
room.
-(2) $5 MG slant-tops in the front-center of the high-limit room.
-(1) $10 MG slant-top in the front-center of the high-limit room.
-(1) $25 MG slant-top in the front-center of the high-limit room.
-(2) 3-play $25 MG uprights in the rear-right of the high-limit room.
-(6) $5 Prog (SF:239) just outside of the high-limit room.
Also maybe worth mentioning:
-(12) MG/MD TITO slant-tops near the pylon bar with prog 5c 8/5 JoB.
-(8) MG/MD TITO slant-tops near the pylon bar with prog 25c 8/5 JoB.
-25c prog 8/5 JoB TITO bar-tops at the bar outside restaurant row.
-$1 prog 8/5 JoB TITO bar-tops at the bar outside restaurant row.
8/5 BP: here are extra details about the existing listings
-(12) 25c Prog (prog on 4oak and higher) coin-in slant-tops near the
corner of the garage bar toward the players club, with a prog meter on
top of the bank.
-(12) $1 Prog (prog on 4oak and higher) coin-in slant-tops near the
corner of the garage bar toward the players club.
DW: a bad paytable (96.76% @4000RF) that I only mention because at the
end of my stay the prog meter was pegged at $2500 (10000RF), making it
99.78% (with a very high variance):
-25c prog 1-2-2-3-4-13-16-25-200-prog (i.e. prog "downtown
deuces"/"colorado deuces") TITO bar-tops at the bar outside restaurant
row.