Room Quality: This hotel appears to be struggling against the newer places; The rates are quite competitive for the rooms. And this is still a Hilton with the associated standards for quality. In other words, a nice hotel, with well-appointed, tasteful and spacious rooms. The range of different rooms is wide, with Standard, Grand, Suites, Park Executive Suites, etc. What we do know is renovated rooms with better beds and linens are called Grand or better. The Grands are all renovated and in the North Tower. The king-bed rooms have sofas, the doubles don't. They all have sitting areas, small TVs and average-sized bathrooms. All rooms have hairdryers and ironing boards. But, let's be honest, we don't iron our clothes when we're home so why would we iron them while on vacation?

Service Quality: Very good. This hotel handles a lot of business travelers and convention attendees because it's right next to the convention center, and the joint is set up to serve their every whim. Lots of executive services. Check-in can be a bear. We have waited over thirty minutes to check-in at midnight on a Thursday.

What You Get Bottles of in the Bathroom: High-quality shampoo and lotion. Be sure to take the bottles and put them in your toilet kit every morning, or they might not give you more.

Clientele: Folks late thirties and up, many of whom are very serious because they are businessmen in town for conventions. There are occasionally some young folks, but they're the exception. Overall, a well-behaved crowd that hoots and hollers little.

How's the Pool? It's good and it's on the roof of the casino, but it's not themed. If you want Palm Springs style, try here. If you want a tropical paradise, try the Strip. They also have tennis courts and a jogging track.

Table Games: All the usual suspects. Blackjack, craps, roulette, pai gow, Let it Ride, etc. Mostly it's average to better-than-average table gaming. The single-deck blackjack pays the lousy 6:5 instead of 3:2 -- skip it.

Bet Minimums: $5 and up but mostly up on weekends and during conventions. During conventions we heard rumors of $100 minimums. Craps can be as low as $5, but at that rate, they only give you 3, 4, 5x odds. The $10 tables offer a more favorable 10x odds. Roulette chips are worth a buck apiece, and tables have $10 minimums.

Machines: From those silly pennies through the roof. An improved selection of video poker with decent full pay. They don't have full-pay double bonus, but they do have full-pay video poker, even at the nickel level.

Cocktails? Pretty good, but they're really going after businessmen who drink in moderation. Unlike some places, they're goal isn't to get you loaded. This should be the goal of every man and woman, though.

Who Gets Comps? The slot club is quite generous, and that's great for the serious players. For table games, this is a high-roller place when it comes to comps, so unless you're throwing around green and black chips, don't hope for much more than a buffet comp.

888 Noodle Bar: One of the latest trends in Vegas is the noodle bar, and we aren't complaining. Although, this one is a bit pricier than others in town. The food is primarily pan-Asian, with loads of noodles and duck, Mandarin beef, curry chicken and some seafood. The noodle styles are all across China and Singapore.

Benihana Village: A huge space made up to look like an ancient Japanese village, with a bunch of different restaruants surrounding a darkly lit seating area. Most of the grub comes from the Benihana restaurant, which features excellent Japanese food, much of which is prepared right at your table. An added bonus would be if they had a big fire or someone got hurt in the preparation, because you'll see it all. Other options are Robata, which does sushi and meats prepared in Japanese broilers, and Teru, yet another sushi spot. It's hard to say how Teru is different from Robata (especially when you're poor like us and just have to look longingly inside like a beggar), but we're pretty sure your waiter could give you the lowdown.

The Buffet: Well, the name ain't much, but it's a large buffet. Not quite good, but edible food. It's also pretty pricey. If you're staying at the hotel, see if you can score some 2-for-1 coupons upon check-in. Also, the dinner buffet includes wine or beer, or do what we do and make a kamikaze of half-wine, half-beer.

Casa Nicola: Mediterranean Italian food. It's high-quality, with the emphasis not so much on the pastas as on the meats and seafoods. They also have an exhibition kitchen, which means you can watch to make sure they don't sneeze on your food.

Garden of the Dragon: They have every kind of Chinese (Mongolian, Szechuan, Cantonese and Peking) in this Chinese restaurant. It's only open for dinner, and it overlooks the Benihana Village, probably reminding many of the way China often looked in on its island neighbor in the early 20th century.

Paradise Cafe: This is the state-mandated 24-hour coffee shop. There is absolutely nothing special about this coffee shop, so don't wander all the way over to the Hilton to try it.

Teru Sushi: The big advantage to this sushi place is that it's here. Well, that's actually only an advantage if you're here. If you're not, then no need to travel just for decent Japanese.

TJ's Steakhouse: Holy cow is this stuff expensive. It's good cuts of meat, but not worth the price. No way, not in this town. Go to the Circus Circus Steakhouse or Binion's and get your money's worth.

Barry Manilow: If you can't smile without him, you're in luck. Barry Manilow performs his greatest hits about 120 nights a year. It's really a concert, and that may be more or less pleasant than the spectacle surrounding other pop stars performing in Las Vegas. If you're a Manilow fan, it's great. If you're not, there isn't a lot in this show for you.

Game Show Spectacular: It's like a televised game show, but without the TV, and with you paying to see it. Wash-outs like Chuck Woolery, Bob Eubanks and Jamie Farr rotate as the host while audience members get to come on stage and compete for cash and prizes. If you love game shows, watch them at home; don't pay to have a slim chance to be in a lousy one.

Hilton Theater: They have a rtating cast of celebrities who fall somewhere between A- and B-list. This includes names like Sinbad, The Commodores, Alabama, and the ubiquitous Righteous Brothers. This is entertainment geared toward people in their 40s and 50s.

Sin City Bad Girls: Come on, how bad can these girls be? After all, they have jobs. Okay, sure the job of this octet of women is mostly to dance around to rock music while exposing their breasts and much gam. But these, days, people can't be picky about work. The show has a live band and some topless singing, too, if you dig that sort of thing.

Sin City Heat: For the price of a drink, you can catch this show called Sin City Heat. To be honest, there is not a lot of heat, just a cover band doing a lot of 70s rock and funk. There's a few pretty girls, so maybe that's the heat part. Or maybe the pipe in some of that desert into the room.

Voices: Lani Misalucha does a bunch of singing. There's a live band, but this show is strictly for an audience that enjoys watching Vegas-style over-the-top singing.

Number of TVs: More than 60, 28 of which are nice and big. They split them up about half and half between sporting and race events.

Number of Seats: About 300. Most (Around 220) are for race bettors, with individual TVs. Some of the seats are reserved, but not a whole lot. Every single one of them, though, is above average in terms of comfort. They're made of nice soft cloth that will make your bottom feel just fine. Sports bettors get about 40 comfy seats and 70 not-quite-as-comfy seats. Poor sports bettors.

How Many Betting Windows? 22, with as few as five being open during slow times. Eight are for sportds with the rest for races. Great big electronic scoreboards help you keep track of all your wacky parlays. Seriously, man, take it easy with those.

Free Drinks? Race bettors definitely get to drink up for free, and maybe sports bettors, although that's less likely.

Snack Bar? At the back of the room, look for a snack bar with mid-priced sandwiches. Or don't. Truly, it doesn't matter to us.

Minimum Wager: $5 sports, $2 race

Other Notes: The room is massive (they claim it's the world's largest, and we can't think of any reason to dispute them, other than general orneriness) and pitch black. We're not sure if all the lights just happened to have burned out every time we visit or what, but this is one dark room. There are a number of good video poker machines nearby. It's a good book, it's just too bad it's inconvenient to truck all the way out here.