Eldorado. Nice - BnF

Just wondering how the games/cocktail service/comps are for those that gamble at eldo/sl/cc as compared to this time last year. Trying to see if it's still worth it to stay there over peppermill. Thanks!

Don't mind me, just carrying on from where we left off.
11) The House Always Wins, Part 1
From this point onwards, we’re going to assume the Courier sides with House, purely because House…well, he dies in all other scenarios. House may now have electricity, an income and a plan, but he’s still weak as hell and still living at the mercy of the NCR, with no real power in the grander scheme of things…yet.
The year is 2281. The Platinum Chip, formerly buried in the Ruins of Sunnyvale, is now within spitting distance of Vegas. House is aware of the Yes-Man AI, but doesn’t know how it is stored, nor who it belongs to. He is aware of Benny’s treacherous nature (hence never allowed him into the Lucky 38), but is underestimating it. And that’ll be to his detriment. Like some grand relay race, the Courier is employed to be the anchor leg that finally carries House’s one-of-a-kind USB home.
The timing couldn’t be better. Knowing how little power he actually has right now, House has been refusing to attend diplomatic meetings with NCR Ambassadors, knowing it could end only in him giving concession after concession until he loses all hope of ever attaining his independence. But, of course, NCR attains what it wants in one of two ways:
a) taking it by force,
or
b) reasoning it under their control.
And House knows he’s made himself very difficult to reason with. Although he wants the NCR to win against the Legion, he cannot allow them to do so on their own terms…or else he’d be next. And he cannot make the NCR win on his terms until he has his Chip back.
Perhaps he could have attended the meetings, made the concessions, became an NCR citizen, ensured his safety under NCR that way, rather than continue to risk himself for a greater vision. But House’s vision is all that motivates him to stay alive at this point. He’d rather risk death than abandon his plan for Earth. It’s why he throws his life away trying to kill you if you destroy the bunker beneath Fortification Hill. Without the means to defend what he needs for his plans, he may as well let himself die.
Anyways, House screens the Courier’s approach to protect them from raiders or tech-hoarders…but doesn’t count on Benny having access to Yes-Man. Nor does he count on having missed a section of Vault 21’s tunnels, allowing Benny to sneak out undetected. This results in his Courier being shot and his Chip, already 200 years late, was further delayed.
A Securitron controlled by House’s “Victor” AI, however, was ordered to inspect the crime scene once Benny departed. He found the Courier barely alive and carried him to a nearby doctor; one who had left Vault 21 many years ago…
The Courier lived to carry out their task, with House monitoring and protecting them as much as possible through Victor (but also holding Victor back where he feels it is necessary, such as the gunfight at Goodsprings). Later in this quest, we can see an unusual amount of cultural sensitivity from the aloof House; he helps you capture the Platinum Chip not by sending in Securitrons (brute force), but rather by playing on the Chairmen’s sense of honour, instructing the Courier to convince Swank of Benny’s treachery. Assuming Benny doesn’t con the Courier thereafter, this plan goes off without a hitch. The Chip is returned.
Why House admitted the Courier into his casino when no one else had been allowed to enter in centuries is a bit of a mystery. If you’ll allow me to speculate, it could be that House identified with the Courier, who survived terrible odds to fulfill their contract, and felt some kinship with them due to that. House’s ethics only really go as far as his contracts do, and he likely appreciates a Courier who works so hard to uphold theirs where no one else would.
Or maybe House was desperate, and figured someone would break in to kill him eventually (maybe not Benny, but NCR would have the ordinance, and Legion the cunning to do so). So perhaps he felt the Courier, as the most recent arrival to the Mojave, was the most trustworthy person he could select. A long shot, to be sure, but such was his life after the War began.
Anyways, House now has his Chip back. This is where the fun begins.
12) The House Always Wins, Part 2
We’ve already talked about the nature of the Fortification Bunker, so here I’ll speak of what the Mk II Upgrade means for House’s Securitrons. It means all the assets around Vegas – the assets House was likely aiming for in the first place – can now be defended by him directly. Hoover Dam, HELIOS One, REPCONN, and so forth. Vegas and the settlements around it can be protected and the Bunker ensures he has the numbers to do so.
But, for now, House doesn’t use this. In order to force a clean rout from the NCR (as opposed to a bloodbath), House must catch them completely off-guard. To that end, he must continue to appear as weak as he was before acquiring the Chip, conserving his forces for the Second Battle of Hoover Dam and thereafter. Activating his whole army before then would be far too conspicuous and only serve to complicate matters.
But when the iron is hot? House plans to use his improved and enlarged robot army to raze Caesar’s camp to the ground, flank and eradicate the Legion, take Hoover Dam, Outer Vegas and HELIOS, force a withdrawal from the NCR…and protect Goodsprings, due to the selfless assistance they provided his Courier. Determinantly, he may also make a move on Primm if it proves itself to be highly annexable to foreign powers
The Securitrons are an army that never hungers, never tires, never sleeps and almost never dies. Armoured second only to the Brotherhood of Steel. Enduring second only to the Ghost People. Each one has the capability to engage squads, vehicles, aircraft…as House said himself, “Vegas will finally have soldiers worthy of protecting it.”
13) The House Always Wins, Part 3
We don’t have a lot to say about House and the Boomers. His ending slide with them is the only one that doesn’t explicitly say the Boomers violently kept travelers out of their home. Make of that what you will.
In any case, it’s artillery – a powerful defensive/ siege asset - to combine with his robots (another powerful defensive/ siege asset).
Perhaps it’d be better to speak of the Kings now. House is infamous amongst us for wiping out the Kings in 66% of the outcomes where the player personally let them live. This leaves a bad taste in our mouths and for good reason – it is by far the darkest mark on House’s character that we see all game. I cannot justify it. But I can try explain it.
The Kings rose to prominence as a de-facto government and police force for Freeside after House pulled his personnel back onto the Strip. However, true to Elvis, they are rather rebellious. They care little for “The Man” and everything for “The People”. House is THE personification of “The Man”, and thus represents the Kings’ ideological opponent. Although House does care for the people in the long-term sense, he’s ice-cold and operates from a high-horse of sorts (not that he really has much choice anymore). This contrasts with the Kings, who help their people baby step by baby step, as equals.
House would find the Kings to be idealistic, but backwards and ineffectual. The Kings would find House to be pragmatic, but too much of a control freak. Whilst House allows many freedoms, his core directives as an employer are non-negotiable; His directives thus feel more like ultimatums at times, which is something the Kings find abhorrent as shown in Kings’ Gambit if you get Colonel Moore to back you - They’d rather die than accept an Ultimatum.
Remember that the Kings as a whole are a rainbow of different tribals who refused to work for House, but also refused to leave Vegas and thus suffered for it. They’re mostly hooligans who occasionally do good things for their community under the direction of a compassionate man. Yet, as we see with the handling of the local water pump, their morality is strained when resources become scarce, just like many other factions of note. Still, they are the Chaotic to House’s Lawful.
It’s thus no surprise that fighting breaks out when House chooses to move back into Freeside after a few years. The only way they live is if they decide to take revenge against NCR troops and squatters during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, wherein House deems an occupation of Freeside to be unnecessary. Sadly, that only happens if the Courier does something truly, truly awful first.
This is honestly the only regret I had during my House playthrough.
14) The House Always Wins, Part 4
Contrary to popular belief, House isn’t blind to the events on the Strip (Vulpes was a necessary part of the plan to get the Courier into the Fort Bunker for House anyways).
At this stage, the Courier has proven themselves trustworthy. In addition, they’ve either proven themselves an exceptional diplomat (earned the love of a paranoid, isolationist faction armed to the teeth with rockets and artillery) or a thorough and talented killer (wiped out the paranoid, isolationist faction armed to the teeth with rockets and artillery). House would prefer the former, but isn’t too against the latter (by his own words if you do kill off the Boomers). At any rate, the Courier is given a list of leads and is told to investigate the Omertas and – if it turns out they threaten the Strip – either wipe them out, or regain their allegiance through a change in management. House admits by his own word that Vegas is only his because he worked to put himself in a position to bargain for it. He won’t let anyone – not even the supposed “elite” of his ventures – jeopardize his work.
He saw Benny coming, only miscalculated how/ when it would happen. He sees the Omertas coming, and sends the Courier to check on them before anything can happen.
The only thing on the Strip that slips by House without the Courier’s intervention are the White Gloves returning to cannibalism, although that may have had something to do with the fact that their highest ranking member was opposed to returning to those ways and generally punishes cannibalism with death, only reconsidering if the Courier decides to sneakily feed one of their friends to them.
“Anyways, moving on.”

• Mr. House, after the Courier deals with the Omertas

15) The House Always Wins, Part 5
This quest marks an interesting turning point in House’s ventures. It’s the first time House explicitly instructs the Courier to destroy another faction’s hold in the Mojave without accepting any other alternative, standing in stark contrast to the general hands-off approach he usually takes. Sure, the overall directives were still absolute before, but methods and outcomes were generally open to discussion. But not now. He only does this when he feels exceptionally strong about something. In this case, it’s the Brotherhood of Steel. And boy does he hate them.
He is dismissive towards the NCR.
He is derisive towards the Legion.
He hates the Brotherhood of Steel.
But why?
House calls them terrorists. From the context of a Fallout 3 Player, that’d sound absurd. From the context of a Fallout 1 or 2 player, it’d still sound a little odd, but at least somewhat credible. From the context of someone aware of the Brotherhood War, it makes perfect sense. For those of you who don’t know, it went something like this:

• Brotherhood and NCR: Hooray! We defeated the Enclave! By sharing our strengths, we can truly conquer anything!

*Just the Brotherhood Now: Hey, what are you doing?
*NCR: Oh, just taking some Enclave tech to study. Gotta increase our Science production.
*BoS: Good. That stuff is mine. Because we trust you so much, we’re going to assume you’re going to just hand it right over to us now.
*NCR: Um, it’s not yours. Anyways, why don’t you want us have it?
*BoS: Because we don’t actually trust you.
And with that, the BoS declared war on the NCR. With superior weapons and armour, the BoS was initially doing rather well, but in the long run the NCR began to cream them because NCR is an actual country with its own infrastructure and logistics. BoS are all crazy-isolationist and thus struggled to replenish numbers. Despite being able to take on many NCR troops at once, the loss of each Paladin set the BoS back immensely as they’d also often lose not only the Power Armour (s)he was wearing, but also a vital splash of their gene puddle. Conversely, the loss of an NCR trooper, or even a dozen of them, had little larger impact on the nation-state as a whole.
Feeling salty from their losses, the BoS did the only thing that made sense at the time.
*BoS: Hey NCR, nice gold reserves.
*NCR: Thanks…?
*BoS:…be a shame if something happened to them.
And with that, the BoS singlehandedly caused the NCR’s economy to tank by irrevocably destroying the gold backing their currency. In other words, Chomps Lewis suffers because some dudes who wear metal got triggered over who gets to keep the Enclave’s toaster. The NCR responded by angrily storming BoS bunkers wherever they could be found. The Brotherhood War still rages to this day, but has now mostly devolved to cat-and-mouse games.
Why is this relevant to House? Consider how dependent he has been (and will be) on the strength of the NCR economy to fund his ventures – without customers, he has no income. No income, no means to recover some of the little resources remaining that are needed for his plans. Consider the extent to which the BoS trashed NCR’s economy. Consider now that the BoS also claims that their goal is to prevent another Nuclear Armageddon. Finally, consider that the BoS displayed total ignorance in what caused that Armageddon in the first place by utterly destroying (or fanatically hoarding) resources on a world that has already almost killed itself over a lack of resources.
The BoS are not only hypocrites. They’re stupid.
And that’s why House tells the Courier they should be killed for being “Ridiculous!” Their ridiculousness gets other people (and even themselves!) killed quite often. As for them being labelled as “terrorists”? If the bombing at Redding wasn’t enough, we get a delightful insight into the matter from Christine Royce.
Bear in mind that she is not only a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, but also a member of the Circle of Steel. This means she represents the BoS’ sense of justice. Remember that.
When we meet her, she had just emerged from an Auto-Doc that had been constantly operating on her without her consent. By listening to the operation through her collar, we hear saws buzzing and frantic breathing, pounding. The procedure of replacing her vocal cords had been happening, over and over, for two weeks. Christine’s traumatized enough by the experience that she palpitates near not only other Auto-Docs, but near any dark enclosed spaces that make funny sounds.
She assumes Elijah trapped her there, and uses that belief to fuel her desire for revenge. If you convince her that Dean did it (which he did)? She forgives Dean instantly, assuming you were nice to her earlier. Why?
“I've... done worse. Much worse... and for more hopeless causes, and I will again.”

• Christine Royce, regarding Dean’s abuse of her

Holy cow. Worse than two weeks of non-consensual surgery without anesthetics for most of it? And she’d do it to others again? And she represents the BoS’ sense of justice? Holy cow.
Whether it’s fitting bomb collars to unfortunate prospectors and sending them against elite NCR troops their Paladins are too afraid to fight themselves (which happens if you find their bunker early on without Veronica) or bravely massacring clinics (determinant outcome in I Could Make You Care), the Brotherhood shows itself to be very, very dirty.
And unlike many other factions like NCR, House or even Legion (none are spotless, but I personally detest the third one for Caesar’s rampant Revisionism, amongst other sins), the sketchy things BoS do does not even come with the promise of a future.
Aside from the odd Radical like Elijah, they don’t advance. They steal pre-existing tech and coast off of it, with no real plans to improve. They don’t grow. They only hoard. House, as a self-made man, likely finds that disgusting. House didn’t even inherit his family business. He had to found his own company, build it up from nothing and then buy the family business out.
The Brotherhood? They’re Pre-War military deserters (and their descendants) who used the materiel they stole to go ahead and steal more shit, using the massive initial tech gap between them and the average Wastelander to push people around so they can keep stealing even more shit, THEN act like saints when/if they decide to share some of what they stole with the outsiders they stole from. They treat their man-written Codex as divine scripture and use it as an excuse to not think.
In the same way that Followers of the Apocalypse (who are also dedicated to preventing another Armageddon, by the way) see through the façade put up by Caesar, so does House see through the façade of the Brotherhood. He knows their history too well to buy into their rhetoric.
Using his knowledge of the Brotherhood War, House recommends you defeat them by activating the self-destruct mechanism (another product of the Brotherhood’s great wisdom) installed deep within the Mojave BoS’ bunker before they try repeat their follies upon Vegas. Because this mechanism is activated deep within the bunker, it can be safely assumed that if the Courier gets out in time, everyone else could have too. But they don’t.
Darwin is vindicated once again.
16) The House Always Wins, Part 6
Ironic, isn’t it? A foreign power wants your head on a plate, but here you are protecting their Head of State. House is aware of Kimball’s unpopularity – both within and without NCR territory - and knows how quickly martyrdom could change that. According to projections, Legion had an 83.75% chance in succeeding with their assassination attempt. House didn’t want them to succeed.
Intending to build a positive special relationship between NCR and the future New Vegas FEZ, House sends the Courier to protect Kimball from Legion assassins (so Kimball will be blamed for the inevitable NCR retreat from the Mojave rather than Vegas). Here, he’ll show appreciation to a Courier with powerful NCR relations or utter scorn towards a Courier who alienated them already.
Through dialogue, we know House is beginning to drop hints of his power by sending and controlling one of his Securitrons as far as Hoover Dam in order to prepare Ranger Grant for your arrival. We also find out that House hates having to wait and see what happens. Although he is hands-off, he prefers being able to influence events rather than watching them pan out helplessly (as he has been forced to for so long).
The President’s safety now delegated, House turns his thoughts towards Hoover Dam. At this time, despite NCR Engineer Lawson’s best efforts, the Dam is not operating at full power. House will change that…just not yet. Not until it is uncontestably his.
17) Wild Card: Finishing Touches
This isn’t a House quest, but it gives us an important insight into his character.
“Well, some of Mr. House's projections predict a ‘moderate probability of civil instability subsequent to the NCR being driven from the Vegas region.’ One of the ‘mitigating contingencies’ he planned was to enlist the Followers to provide increased medical aid throughout the region. Just seems like it might help keep things stable when we go independent. Not that I know what I'm talking about!”

• Yes Man, coasting off of House’s projections and information should the Courier murder the latter.

No matter what you think of the NCR, it can’t be denied that they have helped bring relative stability to the Mojave. House isn’t oblivious to this, and is aware of the problem involved in making the NCR military withdraw. His response, according to the far-too-nice-yet-honest Yes Man?
Fund the Followers and spread their humanitarian efforts across the Mojave. You’ll never hear about this if you play through House’s questline. You won’t even hear it from Yes-Man if you only betray House at the last minute. The implication there is that House successfully enlists the Followers, THE most selfless and humanitarian group in the setting, without the Courier’s help.
And he doesn’t even make a PR stunt out of it.
The implications of that are enormous.
This was only “one” of the contingencies he planned, too. Makes you wonder what else House put in place to ensure Mojave stability after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam.
Anyways, it kinda explains why Arcade feels “disillusioned” with the Followers in his peaceful “Stay in Freeside” ending, since his own feelings about House are less than positive.
18) The House Always Wins, Part 7
The Second Battle of Hoover Dam is looming overhead. With General Oliver’s tunnel vision becoming ever more acute, House sees his time to shine. A human agent is sent to Eldorado Substation to reroute some power from NCR-designated locations to the Lucky 38, jumpstarting its long-dormant reactor. With the Mk. 2 OS upgrade installed, it was now safe for the reactor to operate indefinitely. And so it was done. Vegas now has all the power it could ever need, completely independent of Hoover Dam, Eldorado or even Helios One…but the power generated by those amenities will be needed for other purposes.
19) All Or Nothing
“Perhaps you feel my ideals are unrealistic dreams, but I prefer to think of them as long-term goals of the highest order – goals that transcend generations. Yes, they are far too mammoth for the years of any mortal –of any of us- but we lay the foundations anyways. Nightmares may happen on their own. What we do now may be the only way someone sees good dreams realized within their lifetime.”

• I really wish I could remember where I found this.

Centuries of preparation, waiting and recovering has now come to a head. The plan that was meant to commence before the Great War would soon continue. Whilst Legion and NCR fight over the Dam “like two dogs over a rib – perhaps of their master, long dead…”, House’s agent, escorted by a Securitron, begins the task of infiltrating the insides of Hoover Dam.
Just like for the Eldorado Substation, House gave them an Override Chip (which he had made Pre-War) to allow them to reroute power. This time, it’d be a massive jolt to wake up the Dam entirely…not to mention the hundreds upon hundreds of armoured robots waiting beneath Fortification Hill.
House confirms the scope of his ambitions by not allowing Hoover Dam’s generators to be destroyed – unlike Yes Man, he does not give that option, even though he really doesn’t need the Dam for Vegas. House’s dreams go beyond merely keeping his city to himself – it’s just a means to another end.
Upon rerouting the power, House prints the NCR’s terms of surrender, intending his agent to pass it along to them once the Legion is dealt with. Whilst the NCR is still battling on their half of the Dam, House has set Caesar’s camp ablaze, small groups of Securitrons cutting swathes through Legion Centurions with rocket and grenade bombardments.
For those of you who haven’t read those terms, it can be summarized as this:

• Vegas, Eldorado, Hoover and Helios (along with other locations within that range) now fall under the Free-Economic Zone of New Vegas, a private entity owned by Mr. House as its Sole Proprietor
• NCR military (grunts, rangers, 1st Recon, Military Police, etc) must GTFO the FEZ
• NCR Civilians (OSI, Dam Engineers, tourists, etc) are welcome to stay
• Water and power from Hoover Dam is no longer free for the NCR, but is now an export from the FEZ
• House decides the price of said exports.

There’s a lot of debate over whether the initial prices set (5 caps per gallon of water, 5 caps per kw/h electricity) are fair or not. YouTuber Oxhorn made a noble but ultimately laughable attempt at trying to deduce this. By in-game standards, 5 caps for a gallon is great considering less water than that normally costs at least double those caps, if not more. If we go by the thought that 1 cap = 1 bottle of water (according to an old practice amongst the Hub’s Water Merchants IIRC), it’s less great.
Either way, it doesn’t matter. The fine print means House can change the prices whenever he wants, and according to JSawyer, he wants to play economic hardball with the NCR. He doesn’t want them to collapse, but after winning an event ironically mirroring the original USA's Independence War, he’s still going to charge them as much as he feels he can get away with.
20) Conclusion
And that’s that. House either succeeds in taking the Dam, or he dies long before. “All or Nothing” indeed. It should be worth stating that House’s dreams of achieving interstellar colonization is, ironically, something of a gamble in itself. Either his exploratory ships succeed and he hits the metaphorical jackpot, revealing staggering resources with which to truly revitalize Earth…or they fail, and House would’ve simply sent vital resources and personnel into the void to be lost forever.
Until then, Vegas will “continue to be the sole place in the Wasteland where fortunes are won and lost in the blink of an eye.” Things will be stable, if not always warm. I am sorry if I came across as too aggressive at any point. I believe all endings are valid (except the Legion as it’s presented), but House provides the safest long-term solution. In the end, you must decide if the suffering he allows in the short term will be justified by the long term security/ prosperity he is capable of providing.
You must also decide if his shortcomings justify his death. My objective was to make an attempt at writing the outline of House’s life from beginning to end. I hope you enjoyed!
Now, to end this in true Mr. House fashion:
“/// Will revise and finish this up later. Have set the age at death to update automatically. Obit makes salient points but "pearls before swine," of course. Let's hope the ingrates never have cause to read it. Who knows how many of them are even literate!”

• Post-Script of House’s Obituary (A Tragedy Has Befallen Mankind)

You’ve been wonderful readers! Thank you and goodnight.

Needed some getaway time and wound up here. Staying in a little Townhouse AirBnB off Clyde Fant Pkwy. What should I do for the next couple of days?
Edit: I'm leaving, but we had a fabulous time.
We ate at:
Rhino Coffee ( per the suggestion of our Air Bnb Host) Jacks BBQ (was craving bbq) Ki'Mexico Marilynns Place
We walk around the Norton's Gardens, the Red River District, the Board Walk Plaza.
We went to a few casinos to check them out. (Eldorado, Sam's town, HorseShoe) We net Positive $35 bucks total and the HorseShoe was the nicest one of all of them. And Last night there were some prosletizers outside of the Eldorado. (Is this common?)
We checked out the Corvette Car Show, and a really weird lounge; Prime XO. We went really early in the evening and had a hookah and some water. The lady working was really nice but not quite our scene. Probably should have gone to Athenas for the Hookah.
Overall, we had a really great time. Everyone was super friendly and we are amazed at how well taken care of the city is. It's nicer than our hometown!
Thank you for all of your suggestions, it made such a wonderful weekend getaway for us.

This is probably a ridiculous question, and I apologize for the paranoia. Just my nature, I suppose.
We're going to be staying at the Peppermill, and I was wondering if there is anywhere near that area that we should avoid, especially later at night after a few drinks. My goal is to stay within a couple miles walking distance or maybe 10-15 minutes of cab ride of the hotel. Mostly due to the fact that I don't want to have to worry much about navigating around town or spending a ton of cash on taxi fare.
On the flip side, is there anything within that area that's highly recommended? We don't enjoy loud or crowded places, and we don't really party much. Other than that, if there are any particular local favorite restaurants, casinos, or attractions close to our hotel, we're open to suggestions. Any time, day or night, and "adult" entertainment is fine as well.
Thanks in advance.

Reno Trip Report
Friday, February 16 – Monday, February 20, 2018
Drove from Sacramento around 2pm on Friday, arrived in Reno around 4pm – traffic wasn’t too bad and the weather was gorgeous. I checked into the Eldorado. My room was comped. I asked for a newly renovated room. The new furnishings were nice and the bed was comfortable. My only two complaints about the room were the view (terrible at this particular room) and the water was cloudy.
Instead of a chronological recount of my trip, I’m going to do categories.
Circus Circus: CC was full of families with young children. The BJ tables were generally filled with lots of tourists. I saw mostly $5/10 min. tables, SD and DD with typical Reno rules. They also have a Playboy video BJ machine with $3 min. Hand shuffled and older dealers, games can be agonizingly slow. Fairly good drink service.
Silver Legacy: SL is the busiest of the 3 big downtown casinos. They have a big Asian game pit. The BJ tables were busy all weekend. Lots of $5 tables, SD/DD/6D shoe, but 6:5. A few $10 shoe games at 3:2. I decided to play the $25 min. SD/DD with typical Reno rules, DD9-11/DD10-11. They also have a video BJ machine with $3 min.
Eldorado: Lots of “Super Single Deck” tables at $10 min – at these tables you can DD anything and DAS, but they’re 6:5. Quieter tables in the high limit room starting at $25 min. Good drink service.
The One Club: I use these three casinos as my home base for comps. They have decent restaurants and rooms and I find the room offers to be quite generous.
CalNeva: CalNeva is what it is. I love it, it’s cheap, not super clean, but not pretentious. They always have $5 SD and DD. Occasionally minimums get raised to $10 on a few tables on a Friday or Saturday night. Dealers are easily influenced by toking. The pit managers are old school – I wouldn’t AP here at green or higher.
Harrah’s: The best tables here were the $25 SD/DD tables in the “high limit” area. They have typical Reno rules. Harrah’s is trying to make a comeback in Reno – the casino floor seemed a bit more lively than usual, but it still was a bit depressing.
Western Village – I read about the $3 SD game here with great rules. I checked it out, it was only one table and it was packed. This casino is almost like a smaller copy of the Peppermill – so it’s nice if you’re into that. Seemed to have lots of locals.