Room Quality: The rooms are small - two queens take up almost all of the bedroom area - but clean. The lighting is dim, the walls are tan, and the carpet swirlie. The bathroom has a tiled tub/shower combo in a private area with the toilet, and it has a blowdryer. The furniture is nothing special, with a small table and a couple chairs, and smallish TVs in armoires. Some rooms are showing their age, and not in a good way.

	Check prices for this property with Expedia and HotelDiscount.com. Weekday $70-$120 Discount Weekday $35-$80 Weekend $90-$150 Discount Weekend $70-$110 What does discount mean?

Service Quality: Good, but this is an awfully big hotel. By Reno standards it can have a long check-in wait. Requests for room service or irons get a quick response. The lobby is comfortable. We've actually had to attend business functions here and the hotel handled the arrangements and food service well.

What You Get Bottles of in the Bathroom: Shampoo, conditioner, lotion, shower cap and decent soap are all there for the taking.

Clientele: It's a pretty wide mix. This seems to be the hotel that every tourist must see, and it is almost exclusively toursits in here. The majority are in their forties or older.

How's the Pool? Mediocre, but it's hard to find a great pool in downtown Reno. It's up above the street on the roof, just like most downtown pools.

Table Games: They have more tables than anyone else downtown, about 80. They include several Pai Gow, a ton of blackjack, a few roulette, a couple of craps tables, 3-Card Poker and a few oddball card games. Single deck pays 6:5, so watch out for that. They're doing their darndest to attract the Asian gamblers from the Bay Area, with a separate pit featuring lots of Pai Gow and Baccarat, and Chinese speaking dealers.

Bet Minimums: Pai Gow, Let It Ride, Caribbean Stud and Baccarat are all $5 minimums. For blackjack there is occasionally a $3 table, but expect $5. Craps is usually about $5, and always 3x4x5x odds. Roulette chips are a buck with a $5 minimum. They aren't really dealing any great games since their market is the tourist, not the serious gambler.

Machines: 2300 machines compete for space on two floors, all surrounding the noisy and ridiculous mining machine (trust us, it's ridiculous). They have loads of the newest slots and always some crazy slot promotion going on. Video poker is not great and they seem to turn over the ir inventory frequently, so it's hard to predict if and where they will have full-pay machines. They do seem to usually have a few, though.

Cocktails? Surprisingly disappointing cocktail service for a downtown casino. Of the major downtown hotels, this one had the least free booze. Maybe they steered clear because we kept burping the alphabet.

Who Gets Comps? Don't expect to get rich from MGM Grand casinos' stingy cashback policy. Food is hard to come by - a buffet will be given to a quarter slot player after many hours. Table players need to be betting $20 and higher for several hours.

Fairchild's Oyster Bar: Good seafood for those of us in the middle of the country. If you live on the coast you'll be disappointed by the cioppino, coconut prawns, oysters on the half-shell and other ocean delicacies. Expect to pay about $25 a person by the time you get out the door. That doesn't include the $5 we might hit you up for if we see you.

Flavors - the Buffet: A good downtown buffet, for about the same price that Circus Circus charges for slop next door. The highlights are a good salad bar and decent desserts. Otherwise, it's typical buffet fare. Weekends and Friday night they jack the price up.

Sedona Cafe: A good coffee shop with some nice specials. Steak and lobster or prime rib and crab legs specials are a bargain. Breakfasts are good, but this is one of the coffee shops that's also fine for dinner.

Sterling's: An upscale restaurant with a huge, bright, wide-open seating area, so don't come here looking for romance. Pasta entrees start about $15 and lobster is $55. Most of the meats and seafoods are in the $20s. Slightly overpriced, uninspired, food.

Aura: They call it an "ultralounge", but who are they kidding? This is just a bar off the casino floor where they hope you'll pay some crazy price for a bottle of booze and then sit on a cushy couch. There is a dance floor and some curtains that supposedly make it more exclusive. Don't kid yourself; the drunk you get here ain't any better than the one you get from a bottle of ripple in the alley.

Catch a Rising Star: Mid-level stand up. You're not likely to recognize any of the names, but they are comics who have been doing their schtick for years and have a highly polished shine. One warning, however, is that Catch often hires the types of comics who also sing, and there is nothing less tolerable than an insecure stand-up comic begging for applause with vocal acrobatics.

Exposition Hall: They get Neil Sedaka, Peter Frampton, Diahann Carol and other middle-aged and older acts who appeal to an older audience, preferably one with a lot of money to wager. Tickets are usually around $50, but for some shows can go as high as $75 for good seats. Live boxing can be even more expensive.

Mining Machine: Over the casino is a massive dome, on which they flash laser images during their big, confusing mining show. The theme is apparently something about how lasers (some of which are burned out) won the west and legalized prostitution and gambling. Under the dome is a giant expensive-looking machine that makes a lot of noise during the show. It's a Vegas style tourist draw, but not a good one.

Rum Bullions: What could possibly be more in keeping with the mining theme than a tropical shanty serving umbrella drinks where patrons strut their stuff and ruffle their feathers to pop tunes? Nothing, that's what. It's exactly what Doc Holliday was doing when he got shot.

Number of TVs: About 34 with one big screen.

Number of Seats: Close to 120 in total. 64 are arranged lounge style, twenty are reserved for race bettors and have TVs, so watch your step if you're just trying to check out the game for free. There are 36 other race chairs without TVs. The chairs are plush and covered in quality vinyl. Yum.

How Many Betting Windows? Only seven windows for all those TVs. Watch out for lines during big events.

Snack Bar? Nope. They had one, but it's gone, so you're stuck chewing your nails or smuggling in a Port of Sub. Or, the nearby cigarette vending machine offers a leafy snack if you unravel the papers.

Minimum Wager: $5 sports, $2 race.

Other Notes: A comfortable room, except that it gets pretty noisy since it's smack dab in the middle of the casino. Still, it's one of the better places to cool your heels and watch a sporting event downtown.