Reno In Review

I spent the weekend in Reno's fine and not-so-fine race books, most of which I had been to before, but on the advice of the most affable Dave Tuley of DRF, I made a stop at the Reno Hilton, which is my new favorite book. Also, a shout out to Birthday Boy Ruben over at Your Average Horseplayer for referring me to the fine sports scribe.

Silver Legacy's book has an outstanding atmosphere--dark stained wood, well appointed and generally classy, although a little light on the tellers, and the set up of the screens was a little better at Harrah's.

Reno Hilton was tops. I hadn't been there before, but it was worth the drive. Also, it seems they're the only book in town that has derby futures this early and they take pick six bets. All the corrals have their own monitors, as well. The only thing I would change is to separate the race book from the sports book so we can hear all the race calls over the games.

Harrah's has the best big screen set up. They have one enormous screen which shows whatever race is going off now on it, six giant screens which carry the six most popular signals, and something like 15 or more smaller screens that carry everything else and duplicates of the bigger tracks. You can see every track very well from every seat in the house. At times they needed an extra teller, and some of the tellers were not as proficient at operating the tote machine, though. Also, the atmosphere is a step below the Silver Legacy.

John Ascuaga's Nugget has a cozy, higher-end atmosphere, and is separate from the sports book. When I was there, they only had one teller most of the time, and sometimes two, which meant some people were shut out. The room really had a good feeling aesthetically, though, and that made up for a lot of the other short comings.

Cal-Neva is known for their race and sports book operation, as their book is the operational back office for many of the Reno books such as the Nugget, Boomtown and the El Dorado. Even though they may run an outstanding book, in the strictest statistical use of the term, their facility and customer service in their downtown casino is among the worst of full service books I've seen. The facility is ugly, uncomfortable, has no large screens, and some of the tellers are downright surly. At one point I placed a $10 win bet about two minutes before post. The teller printed the ticket, while my ten spot lay on the counter. I looked at the ticket and it was the wrong horse. I told him so, and asked him to void it and put it on the horse I asked for. He said NO, snatched my bill and said no refunds. I argued briefly, and pointed out that I had not left the window yet and had the right to inspect my tickets. There was maybe two other people in the book and no other tellers, so I was out of luck. Neither the horse I intended to wager on, nor my errant ticket won, but that was little consolation. I won't go back.