Report From The Road

Now that I'm coming to the conclusion of my northern Nevada trip, I thought I would post a few observations and share some information.

This trip has been very enjoyable but I've discovered an unfortunate trend in some of the northern Nevada casinos. I was sad to see the huge decline in casinos offering table games. It seems to be a definate trend for the smaller casinos to completely remove table games and move to slots only. The list of chip user casualties has been growing for some time now, and i think is reflecting the sad state of affairs in northern Nevada. Being a chip collector with $1.00 Nevada chips as my main focus, to say the least, I was very dissappointed. Fallon, NV used to be booming with table games, but now...there's one place to play blackjack, and one place to play poker, with one table each. Everything else is slots only.

For an example, here is the status of the Fallon casinos and a run down of the casinos table/slots status. For some casinos, the news may be new and for others, it's old news.

]b]~Fallon~

Fallon Nugget= slots only
The Depot= slots only
Headquarters = slots only
Bonanza Inn= slots only
Bird Farm= poker (texas hold `em) and slots
Stockman's= Black jack and slots

Now on to a few notes on Reno:

Baldini's~

Baldini's has removed their craps table and pulled the $1.00 chips which were used only there. I spoke with the table games manager who informed me that it was pulled because there was no interest by players. When I visited Baldini's last spring, the table was only open on Fridays and Saturdays after 7:00pm. So add one more $1.00 chip to the growing list of obsoletes.

~Harrah's~

yeah, yeah...I know: what the hell was I doing in Harrah's! I spoke with the cage manager who informed me of a few interesating things. First off, for those of you searching for the elusive "pink cadillac" chip, the cashiers snatch them up as soon as they see them. One pretty oriental girl informed me that she had 23 of them. The cage manager herself has 8, and the other girl working added that she had a few also. They said, they're worth over $300.00, so as soon as we see one we snatch them right up and buy them ourselves. The funny thing about this was that she told me to make sure I come to the cage and ask each time, because they might have one. I had to laugh.

I was also informed that Harrah's will shortly be releasing a completely new rack of chips for all of the denominations. The designs have already been submitted to Gaming Control, and they are just waiting for the approval. She hadn't seen the chips yet, but she said they are very different.

Presently at the craps tables they're using silver dollars since the removal of the brass core chips. There were none available at the cage for those thinking about asking.

For Silver Strike collectors, Harrah's still has no strike machine. All of the previously seen strikes at the cage are gone and none are available. I was informed that they would occaisionally sell the remaining strikes at the cage, but those days are gone. There are no strikes left.

~Rocky's

Closed up tight. Hopefully they'll be the last of the smaller casinos in the area to close, but I wouldn't count on it.

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A few other random casino status notes:

~Carson City[/]

Fandango: very nice place with a great new york style deli called the New York Deli. Good name.

~Minden~

Carson Valley Inn: still a very nice place with a pretty good crowd. I played black jack there with a woman dealer who must have had a medical condition which prevented any sort of facial expressions. She was, however, able to nod without any obvious problems. Her condition was contagious, so I left the table a mere $5.00 ahead. The craps dealers on the other hand were very personable and made playing enjoyable. I stayed, I played...I won $175.00...I toked , then left for Sharkey's.

~Gardnerville~

Sharkey's-basically slots only. They have one black jack table which is only open from 7-12 on friday and saturday nights.

Fernley~
I stopped into a few casinos there as I passed them and peeked inside:

Nugget: Slots only- (dirty little dumpy place)
Silverado- slots only (looks new, pretty good size)