I've been to three different Hollywood Casinos: this one, the one in Maryland, and the one in Pennsylvania. None of them are high class operations.

The slots are horrible. The video poker slightly better. The table limits are ridiculously high. This is West Virginia, not a state that I would consider wealthy and table minimums are $25 with some having $100 minimums on the main floor (I'd hate to see the high limit room). The players club is worthless. And why each of their casinos have to have their own players card which is identical, I'll never figure out. The buffet is overpriced and bad.

Definitely not a place I would make a special trip to.

They claim to payback 89% of take on slots, yet you very seldom see jackpot winners. When you do, they are in the $1,200 to $2,000 range. This is why they are ashamed to post winners on their website. It is no surprise, when you see Charlestown you hear "tight slots!" This is the reputation they have gained and deserve. Maryland has real competition coming in the next year that will make Charlestown a distant competitor (70) miles from Arundel Mills and Ceasars in Baltimore. When you treat customers badly like Charlestown does, only because they can for now, it won't take much to win these folks over to MD.

My wife and I have gone to CT to play slots ever since it was a tent next to the racetrack. It used to be a fun, sometimes win, sometimes lose place to go that is close to home. Ever since they got the okay to add table games, the place went to crap at the slots. Now it is a great place to go if you want to donate your money to them. I have gone dozens of times in the last two years when you would not hear any slot bells or even see a jackpot or hand pay going on with their 5,000 slots for 4-6+ hours. When you do see a machine paying out, it is usually at the lower end of the payout scale. Also, the players club gives very little reward for the dollars you spent there. If you lose a thousand bucks, you might get a free drink.

The people that work there are great and I will surely miss them. I have filled out the papers that excludes me from being able to play there for at least a year. By doing that I cannot be tempted to go there when the urge to play strikes. I would rather travel 2 hours and go someplace that is not owned and managed by Penn National.

If they don't change their ways after my year of exclusion, I will make it permanent.

very stingy with payoffs. Even small combinations are slim to none after $300 on one machine

Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races is very convenient for DC area residents, and has improved DRASTICALLY since table games/poker have been added and since renovation. The surroundings are beautiful. Customer service is great - we needed help from a slot attendant who later brought additional managers over to help us with an issue and the staff seemed very genuinely interested in helping us and spent a lot of time to do so. Everyone we asked for other help was also extremely courteous and friendly. There are several dining options and the atmosphere is very nice even the seating for the "food court" restaurants, but prices are on par with other casinos ($35 for buffet for example) which is a lot if you have 2 people and no coupons (we got no coupons when we joined the players club). Parking is free, unlike every other casino I've ever been to, and there is a free shuttle that goes to many hotels in the area that will drop you off at the front door. As for the games.... The table games have high minimums and some games are not offered (most notably you do not see my favorite - Caribbean Stud). If you don't want an ante of $15/$25 per hand you will be out of luck here, which I found disappointing considering I could play $5 antes at other casinos. The slots I was disappointed to find that many of the most popular newer machines are not represented here, particularly "licensed" machines like Sex and the City and Stargate SG1 and other licensed brand machines. I also didn't see any roulette or blackjack machines and not as many video poker machines as I would have liked. Another omission I found very surprising, considering they have a race track here, was that I couldn't bet on races at other tracks. The race track on site is a wonderful, unique feature here however and is the advantage here over other casinos. This is a good casino to visit for horse racing, convenience, and a nice atmosphere but is lacking in some of the games compared to Atlantic City casinos and minimums are high on table games.