Room Quality: Better than you'd expect. These are nearly equal to the rooms at Silver Legacy, at a lower cost. The standard rooms are slightly smaller than average, have decent furniture, including an armoire with a TV inside. Open closets, standard bathrooms with shower/tub combos and sink all in the enclosed room. All rooms have alarm clocks and irons. Imagine the wild times you can have with those.

	Check prices for this property with Expedia and HotelDiscount.com. Weekday $40-$80 Discount Weekday $30-$60 Weekend $80-$130 Discount Weekend $60-$100 What does discount mean?

Service Quality: Fair. Overall you'll get the same level of treatment you would at any mid-priced hotel.

What You Get Bottles of in the Bathroom: Fancy English-looking stuff: shampoo, conditioner, green bath gel, and lotion. It's sort of funny this stuff is so nice because we never think of the English as smelling extraordinarily good.

Clientele: Not many families vacation in Reno, but the ones that do play at the Circus. Lots of parents in their thirties and forties watch the shows and throw the bones, while their kids run around in the arcades or midway.

How's the Pool? They ain't got one, which explains all those kids going nuts in the casino halls.

Free Shuttle: They have a shuttle that'll pick you up from and take you to the airport. It runs once in each direction each half-hour from five a.m. to midnight. Check with the bellhop for the day's schedule.

Table Games: All your favorites are under the big top, and also under the low, smoke-collecting ceilings of the casino. Look for blackjack, craps, roulette, Let It Ride, 3-Card Poker, baccarat, and Pai Gow. All the blackjack is still 3:2, which is rockin' good news.

Bet Minimums: The minimums tend to be higher during the busy summer months, but the lowest we've seen are $1 blackjack with lots of single deck games, double on 10 or 11, dealer hits soft 17. Expect $3 to $5, though. Craps is usually $3 to $5 with 3x4x5x odds (but look for $1 on slow weeknights). Let It Ride as low as $5. Pai Gow is a princely $5. Roulette can go as low as 50-cent chips and two bone minimum.

Machines: They've got a fabulous selection of the latest slots, with more nickels than you'll find next door at Silver Legacy. The video poker selection is poor and there are few if any full-pay machines.

Cocktails? You can expect about one drink every half hour, which is barely enough to keep you at that drunkenly obnoxious stage that comes right before you lose your buffet on the escalator.

Who Gets Comps? The slot club is generically named and for a good reason. It's a generic club. Meals are easy to come by, and four hours of intense nickel play might get you a buffet (blecch). Three hours of quarters and you can strap on the feedbag and shove the kids out of the way to get some of that orange-ish Jell-o. The tables are an easy comp if you play $10 or more per hand for several hours. But go for Bonici's, not the buffet. Discounted rooms are easy to come by, and you should get one for free if you're betting $50 or more.

Americana Cafe: A really big and mediocre coffee shop with the worn-out country store theme. They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and it's the standard coffee shop fare. Some hot dishes, lots of sandwiches and egg platters.

Courtyard Buffet: Ask people who know very little about casinos, and generally they can tell you that Circus Circus = bad buffet. While this knowledge generally comes from hearing horror stories about the Vegas location, the Reno buffet isn't any better. This is bland, moist food that sits under heat lamps for too long. The one exception is the rotisserie meats, which are pretty good. However, this is about the same price as the vastly superior buffet next door at Silver Legacy.

Kokopelli's Sushi: If you're anything like us (i.e., your brains have been irrevocably damaged by spending so much time in casinos), the first thing you think of when conjuring up images of the circus is... sushi! Right? The food is pretty average, with few unique items on the menu.

Main St. Deli: Located off the midway, the deli has bad pastries, Krispy Kreme donuts (made offsite), good ice cream and slightly-below average deli sandwiches. You can try tricking the teenaged employees into giving you some free grub, but you might not be cool enough to get their attention.

Smokin' Gecko's BBQ: Squeezed in with Kokopelli's sushi is the latest little genre restaurant. It follows the abandoned Mexican and pizza places with an equally disappointing interpretation. This time it's ribs and BBQ, with loads of chicken and sandwiches on the menu. Actually, ribs make up about 10% of the menu, and pizzas for the kids still make up 40%. The rest is sandwiches, salads and standard appetizers. Overall, disappointing.

Steakhouse: The one thing Circus Circus does very well is steak. This quiet restaurant is off the midway and offers a very good early-bird prime rib as well as lower-than-expected prices on good meat.

Arcade and Carnival Games: Practically by default, the Circus Circus midway has the best arcade in downtown Reno. There are carnival games, all the new violent games with big screens, and the classics like Centipede and Pac Man tucked in there for us old-timers.

Casino Cabaret: You can see live lounge music in the casino. It's powerful loud, as we discovered when we tried to play drunken penny video poker nearby one night.

Circus Acts: Every day until midnight they have the loneliest circus acts in Northern Nevada. Be prepared for dogs in tu-tus, low-wire artists and some off-key circus music.

Number of TVs: They claim a total of 50 flat screens throughout the casino, but there are only 22 in this place and the next door Carousel Bar. We don't know exactly how they got that total. There is nothing you would call a big screen, unless you were super tiny.

Number of Seats: Right around 40 each for racing and sports fans. They aren't particularly comfortable, and none have individual TVs.

How Many Betting Windows? Six. And here's a little trivia: they aren't really windows. Those would make it hard for you to hand over your cash. They're just openings in the counter. Behind these so-called windows are white boards with magnetic team names and ink pens for writing spreads and odds. It's so last-century.

Snack Bar? No snack bar. There are free drinks if a cocktail waitress gets disoriented and happens to wander into the room. And the Carousel bar is close at hand in case she doesn't.

Minimum Wager: $5 on sports, $2 on race. Pretty standard stuff.

Other Notes: They have finally moved the sports book away from the shared space with the poker room, to a new area... right next to the poker room.

Number of Tables: Six tables, with usually far fewer than all of them operating.

Comfort of Chairs: Average. Your butt won't thank you after a few hours here.

Closed Room or Open to Casino? The room is off the casino floor, but it's still pretty noisy in here because it has low walls and is right next to the sports book.

Game Spreads and Limits: Lots of low-limit games, like $2-$4 and $3-$6 Hold 'Em. They claim they deal stud occasionally, but you have to get enough people for a game. There is a nightly No-limit Hold 'Em game for the big boys who like clowns and you can buy into it for $50.

Beginner Games or Classes? There are beginner's lessons in the morning, followed by a group of salivating locals coming in beating the crap out of the rookies. No, just kidding.

How Crowded is the Room? Fair, with three or four tables on weekdays. You might have a wait of up to a half hour on big weekends.

Comps? Every hour of play gets you $1 in food credit, with a maximum of $7 per day. They had a flyer that says, "Save your comp dollars and enjoy a big night out in one of our fine restaurants." We take issue with the words "big night," "enjoy" and "fine" in that sentence, but it is true, you can save your comp dollars until you get enough for a meal.

How Good Are the Players? It's mostly tourists, but there are a few rocks. The stakes are too low for a pro to come in and clean up, but a tight player who knows the game will be well-placed to win some hands.

What Else Do I Need to Know? There are high hand jackpots for Hold 'Em. Also, there is at least one cheap tournament every day.