Horse Racing Cards Drinking Game

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OBJECTIVE OF HORSERACE: Bet on the right ace or get wasted!

INTRODUCTION TO HORSE RACE (HORSERACE) Horserace is a drinking game that utilizes a standard deck of playing cards. The game is inspired by horse racing, as alluded to by its namesake. To set up the game, shuffle through the deck to find the four aces, and place them in a horizontal row across the table. This is a gambling game for three or more players. The horses are represented by the four Aces that race along the course according to the suits of cards turned by the dealer. At the start of the race players bet on the outcome. A basic introduction on of how to play Horse Race Drinking Game. To set up, the aces are removed from the deck of cards (called the‘Horses’) and placed side by side on a table. 12 cards are placed in a vertical line to the left of the horses. The players pick a horse and place a bet (‘alcohol’). The game is often played using the handicap cards as “falter” cards. This can be done in one of two different ways. #1 – When the lead horse reaches a new row, that handicap card is flipped. The horse of that suit will drop back one row (and player should drink).

MATERIALS: Beer, Standard deck of card, a table

AUDIENCE: Adult

TYPE OF GAME: Drinking

INTRODUCTION TO HORSE RACE (HORSERACE)

Horserace is a drinking gamethat utilizes a standard deck of playing cards. The game is inspired by horse racing, as alluded to by its namesake.

To set up the game, shuffle through the deck to find the four aces, and place them in a horizontal row across the table. These aces are the horses. Deal 8 cards from the top of the deck to form an L with the Aces: the cards should be dealt in a vertical column perpendicular to the row of Aces. Each card in the column is referred to as a “link.”

Set-Up

Horse racing card drinking game

Prior to starting the game, players bet on which horse (ace) they think will win. Bets are quantified by a number of drinks and a suit, for example, 4 on hearts. Players must drink half of the drinks they bet before the race begins.

1 Drink = 1 oz (2/3 a shot or 1/12 of a beer)

THE PLAY

One player, who can be chosen by any method players choose, in the announcer. After all bets are accounted for, the announcer flips over the top card of the deck. It is only the suit of the card that is significant, the ace of that suit moves forward 1 link.

Each time a horse moves up to a link for the first time, the link card is flipped over by the announcer and the ace of that suit moves back 1 link. Horses that haven’t moved yet cannot be set back 1 link. The announcer continues to flip cards from the deck and the horses gallop forward along the links until one ace passes the final link, across the finish line, to the winner’s circle.

Once the race has finished, the players who bet on the correct ace winning give twice the number of drinks they wagered while losers drink half their wager.

I don’t generally cover traditional card games here. By “traditional”, I mean card games that are played with a standard 52 card deck. I leave that kind of coverage to bigger sites like Pagat.com.

Horse Card Game

I have a cousin who lives in Texas, though, and he’s always been fascinated by horse racing. In fact, he took me to Lone Star Park not long ago, and I found some interesting stuff about horse racing on the Web. For one thing, you can learn about the best horse racing betting sites, which is an endlessly fascinating subject. For another, there’s a drinking game played with cards called Horserace, and that’s what I’m going to write about here today.

Horse Racing Drinking Game Cards

Instead of betting money on horses and how they’ll place, players of Horserace bet on each of the four aces. One player is the announcer. She takes the ace of each suit out of the deck. These represent the horses. They’re laid face up at one end of the table, which represents the gates.

Horse Race Card Game Drinking

The rest of the cards are shuffled and placed face down along one of the edges of the table. These cards represent the links. If that’s hard to picture, just imagine an L shape, with the short end of the L being made up of the line of four aces.

The players make bets on their horse. For example, they might place a bet on the nine of spades. Some of these bets can mirror the bets that are made in an actual horse race, but it depends on who you’re playing with and how well they understand these kinds of bets.

Some players just pick a single horse. Depending on who’s playing, the winner might be awarded drinks, or the winners might be immune from having to take a drink, while all the other players have to drink.

The race happens after all the bets are placed. The announcer flips over the face down cards (the links). The suit of each card that is flipped over determines which ace moves forward on the track. Generally speaking, since this is a drinking game usually played by a lot of young and enthusiastic partiers, the people involved are cheering on their horses and getting excited by the action. A good announcer will really get into her role and ham it up.

Horse Racing Card Drinking Game

You can read more about the Horserace drinking game at DrinkingGames.com. I should also point out that I’m not encouraging anyone to play drinking games or even to drink alcohol at all. If you do decide to enjoy alcohol, you should do so responsibly, and that means not driving.

I guess I just thought it was interesting to see what kinds of interesting and unusual card games are available out there that aren’t designed by professional card game designers like Donald X. Vaccarino or Reiner Knizia. You might consider these to be folk card games.