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Official Horse Race Game Thread (4 Viewers)
- Thread starter wonderpuddle
- Start date
Epic
Love the box you made. Nice!
Next up, horses made from hot sauce bottles!
Amazing! Idea: Put more numbered spaces along the track, at least halfway. When there are multiple horses in the middle of the track, especially when 5-7 (or 4-8) is rolled, it makes it easier to quickly identify and advance the proper horse.
Cheers, will consider it. Or numbering the "horses" somehow. We'll see.
Samuel
Straight
LeGold, I think you need to get together with Lego and put out a complete kit! 
Yeah.... ain't gonna happen. Two reasons - this is too much gambling related, so a red light for them. Also, I already tried partnering with them for an idea years ago, they said nah, and a year or two later they did it anyway but alone.LeGold, I think you need to get together with Lego and put out a complete kit!
It's been forever since we ran a tournament, so we're basically strictly cash. I introduced the horse race first, thinking that once we started playing poker, it'd be hard to interject a new game in the middle. I think a couple factors played into my guys not taking to the horse racing right away:
- We haven't played live poker in a while, and I think my guys were just itching to get cards in the air.
- We were all a little hungry, waiting for pizza to arrive, and probably too impatient to listen to an explanation of how the game worked.
- A couple of the guys got really unlucky with the cards they were dealt and paying a decent amount already into the pot during the scratch phase.
- We seemed to be rolling a lot of scratched horses during the race, building the purse relatively high before someone suggested we cap the bets.
I think maybe some of the guys who got unlucky with their cards and rolls during the horse race didn't care for the mandatory betting aspect of it. I think the purse was ~$30 before we capped the bet, and if we had kept putting in bets for rolling scratched horses, it would have probably doubled--that's how "unlucky" the rolls seemed to be, especially for some people. And that's on 25¢/50¢/75¢/$1.
Have different ideas on how to implement a "quick start" version of the game--maybe I should have come up with something like that, a horse race "lite", for the first game--to get through the scratch phase faster and the racing part going sooner. Will write that out later for comment/critique.
WedgeRock
Royal Flush
Someone might be adding a jockey and horse Hot Stamp to the order in the near future..... Just saying....
WedgeRock
Royal Flush
Who?!
I swear to God I can't take you anywhere nice.
WedgeRock
Royal Flush
These posts are bananas.
100
I really like the cherry Fineni and the horses that come with it, looks like I need to import one from Amazon US as I can't find any for sale in Europe. While the game seems fun and many improvements have already been suggested, I'm thinking of adding these house rules:
(1) During their turn before rolling the dice, a player may choose to double the shares in a horse that one of their cards holds (place a token on that card). The player must discard (x) other cards to do so. This process may only be done once per card (you can't quadruple the initial shares of a card) and per turn.
OR
(2) After rolling the dice, a player may discard (x) of their cards in order to ignore the result and reroll. The second roll may not be ignored.
A card may not be discarded if it holds 100% of the shares in a horse (so there will always be a winner). The (x) would depend on the number of cards the players are dealt, don't think I'd want anyone to be able to use the above rules more than once or twice per game.
(1) During their turn before rolling the dice, a player may choose to double the shares in a horse that one of their cards holds (place a token on that card). The player must discard (x) other cards to do so. This process may only be done once per card (you can't quadruple the initial shares of a card) and per turn.
OR
(2) After rolling the dice, a player may discard (x) of their cards in order to ignore the result and reroll. The second roll may not be ignored.
A card may not be discarded if it holds 100% of the shares in a horse (so there will always be a winner). The (x) would depend on the number of cards the players are dealt, don't think I'd want anyone to be able to use the above rules more than once or twice per game.
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I haven't had this happen yet, but I haven't raced a lot yet either.
My plan would be as follows: they can obviously buy more chips or use cash, whatever, probably a $10 "add-on" when playing $0.25. If the player opts not to do this they would forfeit their cards and any winnings attached to them, and the stakes of horses held by the others would go up. Say a player didn't want to put in any more money, but they had 2 of the 4 deuces. If the deuce wins, the player(s) holding the other 2 deuces would chop the pop.
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...On a related note, has anyone run into a "0-race"? Where someone has all horses scratched? It'd be highly unlikely but totally possible, especially if playing with a very large crowd, so less cards per player.
How do you handle that? There'd be no incentive to roll as you couldn't possibly win anything. Do you just let them sit out the race? This is probably so rare it's not worth thinking about too much, but it's good to be prepared....
How do you handle that? There'd be no incentive to roll as you couldn't possibly win anything. Do you just let them sit out the race? This is probably so rare it's not worth thinking about too much, but it's good to be prepared....
yes we have, and sucks to be him, we don't look at the cards until after the race is over......
Oh wow, no way! That'd take all the fun out of it. I need that sweat, that gamble!
Wait, plus, don't you need to look to see who scratched and pay those? Or you do that at the end too?
"Sucks to be him" is a fine response so long as everyone agrees up-front.
Do you skip discarding and paying during the scratch phase?
yes, no paying until the race starts, so after the scratch phase
we ante 2 dollars each
we deal the cards - we give the same amount of cards to each player, so sometimes we have extras
then we roll to scratch the 4 horses
we roll and pay, we play what ever stakes dealer call, seems to be 1,2,3,4 more often than not
after horse finishes we look at our cards, collect our winnings, if one of the cards for the winner was not dealt then the cards that do match get a 1/3 instead of 1/4 per card
the ante pot goes to best poker hand in the cards dealt to each player
So for my next horse racing attempt with my home game group, I want to get to the racing phase as quickly as possible, which I think will better hook my guys into the game. I think paying for rolling scratched horses during the game feels more exciting and less like paying a penalty when done during the scratch phase. Had the following ideas to quick-start the game...
Pre-roll scratch horses: I'd roll ahead of time to determine the four scratched horses. To save more time, I could prep a deck ahead of time with the Aces, Kings, and the scratched horses removed already. Could roll different sets of scratched horses and prep multiple decks, and then choose one at random at each post time.
Having a higher ante and no multipliers: Maybe it's just my group, or maybe it's just the first race was odd with the amount of scratches we were rolling, both in the scratch phase and during the race, but even 25¢/50¢/75¢/$1 (with a 50¢ ante) was building the pot way too high. I think a slightly higher $1/person ante (half of which goes to the person who rolls the horse to the finish line) and then paying a consistent 25¢ for rolling any scratches during the race only will be faster and more exciting for us.
Deal out even number of cards: This isn't really a time saver, and I'm actually not sure if it's more or less equitable to deal out an even number of cards, thus leaving some cards undealt and increasing the share of the purse for some people. Maybe dealing out all the cards is actually more fair even if a few players end up getting more cards? (Has anyone done the math on this?)
The last one I could take or leave, but I'll definitely try implementing the first two. Again, goal is to get my guys used to and enjoying the game, in whatever modified form, then maybe reintroduce some of the core rules, like different amounts for each scratched horse. Welcome any ideas or suggestions!
Pre-roll scratch horses: I'd roll ahead of time to determine the four scratched horses. To save more time, I could prep a deck ahead of time with the Aces, Kings, and the scratched horses removed already. Could roll different sets of scratched horses and prep multiple decks, and then choose one at random at each post time.
Having a higher ante and no multipliers: Maybe it's just my group, or maybe it's just the first race was odd with the amount of scratches we were rolling, both in the scratch phase and during the race, but even 25¢/50¢/75¢/$1 (with a 50¢ ante) was building the pot way too high. I think a slightly higher $1/person ante (half of which goes to the person who rolls the horse to the finish line) and then paying a consistent 25¢ for rolling any scratches during the race only will be faster and more exciting for us.
Deal out even number of cards: This isn't really a time saver, and I'm actually not sure if it's more or less equitable to deal out an even number of cards, thus leaving some cards undealt and increasing the share of the purse for some people. Maybe dealing out all the cards is actually more fair even if a few players end up getting more cards? (Has anyone done the math on this?)
The last one I could take or leave, but I'll definitely try implementing the first two. Again, goal is to get my guys used to and enjoying the game, in whatever modified form, then maybe reintroduce some of the core rules, like different amounts for each scratched horse. Welcome any ideas or suggestions!
Do your players understand that a big pot means big winner(s)!?? How big was the pot?
Biggest I've seen yet was like maybe $35? Somewhere in the $30s. And it was one of those near-perfect scratched ones. I think it was 5, 6, 7, and 8 scratched with 7 in the $0.75. And when it finally ended there were like 3 horses with 1 hop to win! Quite the game, one of the most fun ones, as we were playing short-handed and 2 players had sweeps in their hand. So very exciting! It ended up being chopped up so no one felt the real "pain" LOL.
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