Reno Weekend

I don’t normally do trip reports because my trips usually consist of – played video poker all day – and that’s not too interesting. This one had a little more to it so here goes……


I flew out to Reno on Thursday night after working all day. Getting in late wasn’t ideal but it gives me a full day Friday without taking any vacation time Thursday. Took an Uber from the airport to Atlantis. Fare was $10.50, which for distance and time is quite a bit more than Vegas. Checked in to concierge tower room for 3 nights.


Started out Friday morning with breakfast in the concierge lounge. There’s no hot food but otherwise it has about anything you can think of. Boxed cereal, hard boiled eggs, muffins, fruit, berries, bagels, yogurt, granola, bread, milk, juice, and a fancy hot drink machine. Friday was a 5x comp points day so I wanted to put in a decent amount of play. I started with 3-4 hrs of $1 NSUD, which was actually $.50 10-coin. Not sure what it is about Reno but a good chunk of the video poker machines at most of the casinos go beyond 5 coins. My loss was right around the expected amount for a session with no deuces and no royal.


Late morning I went to the gym for a run. I hate running on treadmills but this was fairly quick. After that I went out to the pool for a bit. Atlantis has both an indoor and outdoor pool. The outdoor area isn’t real big but it’s also not crowded. After some pool time I showed and had a late lunch at the buffet. They completely redid the buffet a year or two ago and it’s now really good IMO. After lunch I put in a keno ticket for 50 games. There’s a $1.50 9-spot progressive that’s currently at $1.4 million which puts it at about 107% so I figured what the hell.


The high limit room has a $1 5-coin progressive with a really fast meter. There are 7 machine in high limit and then 3 more on the other side of the wall outside of high limit. It’s up to about $8000 so I figured I’ll take a shot at that. Every machine was full so I had to wait a few minutes. I was a little surprised by which games people were playing. I think the breakdown was 2 9/6 jacks, 5 9/6 DDB, 2 8/5 bonus, and 1 15/9 deuces. I got on a machine that had a crappy deal/draw button which was annoying. Even more annoying was that I didn’t get a quad in an hour. Was finally able to move to a better machine and played there for about 30 minutes until the lady next to me got the royal on a redraw. After that I put in a few more hours on the NSUD. Caught a royal after holding four, my 5th single line royal this year. Checked my keno ticket and it had $33 on it, which means I hit 5/9 3 times and 6/9 once. Put another 50 games on it and went to bed.


Got up Saturday morning and checked my keno ticket……$1.4 million!!!! Oh, wait, no I’m still sleeping, that was a dream. After actually waking up on Saturday I walked over to Peppermill. My phone says it is ¾ mile door to door. I find the Peppermill slot club to be really annoying. The earn rate for comps and points seems to vary every trip and sometime within the same trip. Last trip was good, I did about $7000 of coin in and got something like $45 in comps on a 6x day. Today I played $1 triple play for about an hour on a 10x day and got $24. Apparently that massive $100 I won last trip got me put in the bucket of players they’re afraid of. Whatever.


Back at Atlantis, I had a cobb salad at Manhattan Deli for lunch before heading back out the pool for a couple hours. Weather has been perfect, low to mid 80s and 30% humidity. Bistro Napa has a happy hour every day in the bar area from 4p-6p where drinks and small plates are half price. Combine that with paying with comps earned on a multiplier day and you’ve got an amazing deal. Two plates and two drinks was $30, which is the equivalent of $15 freeplay. I spent most of Saturday night playing poker and had two brutal hands. On the first one I’ve got KQ and the flop comes KK2. I bet out fairly big and get called by one player. Turn is a 3, I check to see if I can get him to put some more $$$ in the pot and he bets $25. I check-raise to $80 and he shoves. None of the hands that beat me make much sense the way the hand played out and I’m getting a good price so I call. He’s got KT and gets bailed out with a river 2. In a later hand I’ve got 66 and flop Q62. Turn another Q and river a 4. Get all in with a guy that hasn’t turned over anything other than a good starting hand all night and he shows Q6. I’m just thankful I only had about $180 before that hand, I was thinking of rebuying to get back up to around what a couple other players had.


After another concierge lounge breakfast Sunday morning I went down to the pool to get a little exercise while there’s no one else in the water. After that, I put some more play in on the NSUD. It’s a 3x day and there are some drawings later. I’m checking out of Atlantis today and into Peppermill so I take my bag to the bell desk and head back to the poker room. Played for a couple hours, no big or interesting hands. Then I had a late lunch and the all-you-can-eat sushi bar. Got sat next to a guy that had been at the hemp convention next door. We talked about that for a bit, interesting business. By the time that was done the drawing had started and I got called for $200. That was a nice surprise, it’s a fairly big place and I didn’t play all that much. Next I make the walk back to Peppermill with my bag. Get checked in at Peppermill and there’s thumping base coming from the next room. I head back down to the front desk and ask if they can move me to a different room. Front desk girl goes in the back for a couple minutes and then comes out and tells me they’re going to give me a complimentary upgrade to a nice suite. OK, deal. She kind of oversold it. It has an additional sitting area and in the bathroom there’s a tub but otherwise it’s the same as my basic room. All that matters to me is it’s quiet and I can sleep. But it’s still early and it’s a beautiful night so I went and sat at the pool for a while before getting to bed.


Virginia Lake park is only a block or so behind Peppermill. It’s a pretty cool area with some pretty new condos on one side and some older houses on the other side. It’s an older area of town and the park has quite a few trees. The path around the lake is almost exactly a mile. It was another great weather morning so I went there for a nice long run. When I got back it was time to get showered and packed up to head to the airport. Took the Peppermill shuttle to the airport and there was another driver riding along. Apparently someone puked in one of the limos and he had to go pick somebody up or something. On both my flight to and from Reno there were a couple people that had mascot type heads with them as carryons. Found out the Biggest Little Fur Con was at Grand Sierra this weekend. With that and the hemp convention at the main convention center it was quite the odd convention weekend in Reno. I took Uber home from the airport, driver gave me a 1-star rating for not tipping.

 

Some pics....

 

It's true, not much to do in Reno, that's why I "double dip" and go to Lake Tahoe

 

Thanks vetsen! It's always a pleasure to read a report from a smart gambler.

That actually sounds like a typical distribution, although I guess sometimes a high jackpot will attract more serious players.

Wow! That's not a typical occurrence.

Ugh. I thought tipping wasn't a thing with Uber. I guess tipping eventually infects everything.

 

Nice gambling plays! Too bad the Keno dream didn't turn into reality. I enjoyed reading the report.

 

Nice report! Agree with dex on the game distribution. There is a big subset of people where it's DDB or the highway.

 

I didn't write that very well. I totally agree with you guys that that's the normal game distribution. I was just thinking that a subset of players attracted by a large progressive would be more likely to play the better game. But maybe that's affected by Atlantis being so aggressive about restricting advantage players.

 

Nice report. We just got back from 8 days at Peppermill Tuscany stay. Nice rooms and we both like their Buffet. I have to agree with you about the slot club. Not very forthcoming and it's hard to keep track of your points there.

 

Too bad the keno in Reno win was just a dream! Or perhaps it's a premonition for your next trip?

Thanks for the report!
I've never been to Reno, but I appreciate having the chance to read your write-up anyway!

RICHARD