I drove to Reno from the San Francisco area on Friday morning, which
took barely more than 3 1/2 hours. I arrived at the Peppermill at
1:40pm. We left from Reno just before 3pm, cleared Sacramento at 5pm,
paused in Dixon and were at home at 7:20pm - juggling the driving
schedule to avoid rush hour both in Sacramento and in the San
Francisco area is tricky.
The expansion work has started with the initial work on the new
parking structure, which means that parking space has been severely
amputated, and all levels of players are affected (from the
low-rollers who have to park quite far away to high-rollers who can't
rely on ample reserved space being available just across from the VIP
lounge).
I checked in at the Peppermill without a problem, though I was not
able to get a room with a king bed (the room was booked through
hotwire, which doesn't allow to specify such details). As usual the
room was comfortable, spacious, and clean, but it was a bit noisy as
well.
We ate several times at the coffee shop, which is decent but certainly
not fancy, and cheap during the week with the $5.95 comfort food menu.
I found that breakfast at the coffee shop wasn't as good as what I
remembered from the purple parrot at the Atlantis. We also ate at
Oceano, which can be recommended without a doubt: the food is fresh,
refined, and affordable; customer service stood out as being
excellent. Taking the Oceano as a reference, I imagine that the steak
house, Romanza and White Orchid must be either absolutely outstanding
or seriously overpriced. My wife also got some chinese food to take
away from the food court, which was standard cheap chinese cuisine,
just what one would expect from a food court.
Live music at the cabaret stage was superb on Friday night, if you
like alternative rock (I unfortunately didn't take note of the name of
the band, but it was good enough that if I could get a recording of
what they played that evening I'd certainly keep it in my CD
collection). I only had a very quick glance during the other two
evenings but the music didn't seem to be as good. On the other hand I
found the music that is generally played on the casino floor to be
irritatingly boring, to the point where I sometimes wished I had an
iPod to carry my own music.
On the casino floor, I found that the area around the players' club
and blue keno had a lot of cigarette smoke; so did the enclosed space
between the fish bar and the fireside lounge with its numerous VP
machines. Smoke isn't a big issue around the north entrance, but there
are some unpleasantly cold air drafts if you play close to the doors.
In my opinion the most pleasant place to play on the casino floor
(outside of the high-limit area) is the space around the cube bar.
I went to ski in Alpine Meadows on Sunday, which is exactly a 1-hour
drive from the Peppermill. Arriving there a 9:15am I found that the
parking lot was almost entirely full.
The VP gods were with me on this trip. With about $6000 of coin-in
playing primarily multiline penny 9/6 JoB (about 120000 hands), I hit
5 royals, ending up very slightly positive (and with comps I ended up
ahead by more than 1%). Highlight was holding 4 to the royal on a
10-play machine and hitting 2 royals at the same time, lowlight was
losing all that money in 40 minutes on a 100-play machine. The
interesting "what are the odds" tidbit was to not hit a single full
house in 10 two-pair hands on a 10-play machine (odds: approximately
1-in-7300). The comp rate at the Peppermill appears to be between 0.7
and 0.75%.
There didn't appear to be a free slot tournament today (Monday), it
was seemingly replaced by a mister money tournament that is only open
to bronze cards and higher.
The vpFree inventory for the Peppermill should only be used as a
guideline. There are so many machines, most of them MG/MD with
different paytables for the different denominations and coin numbers
varying from 3 to 25 that keeping track of everything is a task that
would require several casino monitors. I'll also say about the
inventory that there's a lack of consistency in the way the various
places are named, which is a hard problem (the place is big, and has
plenty of small areas where machines can hide). Just be sure to know
your paytables and to properly check the machines before sitting down.
Inventory updates/corrections:
A bank of 6 uprights between the high-limit area and the poker room
with 10/7 DB, progressive on quad-aces and higher, which doesn't
appear to be listed.
50-play machines don't have pennies, only the 100-play ones do. There
are only 5 100-play machines left (2 by the fish bar, 3 by the cube
bar where 2 are toward Romanza and 1 toward the table games). There
are quite a few 50-play machines that are not in the database, but I
don't have a full listing (there are more than 4 50-plays at the
cabaret bar, there are also at least 2 of them (slant-tops) between
the players' club and the steak house, and at least 3 of them
(uprights) between the mister money machine and the doors). If you
like to play 50-play or 100-play in pennies, Atlantis is a better
choice.
The 9/6 JoB super times pay machines are there, there are 4 of them.
Just about any VP machine has 9/6 JoB in quarters (or higher),
including at the bars. 5c and 10c usually have worse paytables,
typically 8/6 or 9/5.
The 6 spin pokers (uprights) by the blue keno and 6 (slant-tops) by
the cube bar toward the buffet are there. I couldn't find 4 spin poker
deluxe machines by the blue keno (I found 1 of them by the sports
book, upright, along the high-limit area, where there are also at
least 2 regular spin pokers as well that aren't listed. There's also
at least 1 deluxe one in the hallway outside the coffee shop, along
with at least 2 regular spin pokers).
There's a bank of 8/6 JoB, prog on full-house and higher, uprights by
the flamingo bar.
JBQ