With the exception of its excellent sportsbook, Circus Circus Reno has long been one of the worst-managed casinos in the Reno area, seemingly actually being run by clowns. Old and dirty, with paranoid, unfriendly pit personnel, most dealers suffering from shuffling disease, and featuring house-ordered preferential shuffling even against tiny-stakes players, the dump is a burn joint.

But it has hit a new level of stupidity. Circus Circus Reno sends emails with weekly free play offers that formerly were able to be loaded directly onto customers’ cards by use of the PIN, ready for immediate use on the machine(s) of the customer’s choice. But now, the system has been changed to instead create a new "line-standing opportunity" for patrons. To "validate" the free play, patrons now must now stand in the long, typically slow-moving lines at the players club.

When a patron asked the players club manager the reason for this newly-concocted stupidity, the manager replied that most patrons "prefer standing in line" to directly loading the free play into a machine, because "now we can offer more free play." Further questioning revealed the manager had no clear idea as to what she was talking about, as she provided nonsensical answers to simple questions. Among other things, she claimed the "new computer system" is unable to correctly set the dates on which the free play should be automatically activated, so it must be done manually at the players club. Because many other casinos with supposedly older computer systems can handle this mundane task, it is hard to know if the players club manager was lying or really is as ignorant as she seemed. The claim that most patrons prefer wasting their time standing in line instead of directly loading their free play is mind-boggling.

I hope top management at Circus Circus looks at this absurd situation and takes corrective action before more customers are lost forever because of this stupidity.