If you are pining for live racing on what would have been Kentucky Derby weekend, why not get together with friends (safely and remotely of course via Zoom or Google Hangouts or whatever your fave video conferencing app is) and have a few rousing rounds of the Horse Racing Card Game. Touted as a ‘drinking game,’ it can easily be tailored to abstainers in the family, such as your 10-year-old.
Requirements:
– a full deck of cards
– something to drink (shots, cocktails, mocktails, juice, snacks*, etc.)
– a pen and paper
* if you want to get really creative (and evil) the drinks or snacks that the ‘losers’ have to consume can be something awful, like coffee and grapefruit juice mixed, or a slice of jalapeno, or those terrible cupcakes you baked this week. The group may also choose to have a ‘friendly side wager’.
The Setup
One person will be designated the Announcer, who will control the ‘race’; they will remove all four Aces (representing the horses) from the deck of cards and shuffle the remaining deck. He or she will then lay each Ace side-by-side face-up, with 6 to 10 cards face down perpendicular to the row of aces to form an ‘L’ shape and represent ‘links’ of the race:
Players place ‘bets’ such as, ‘3 drinks’, and are betting on the suit represented by their particular Ace (the horse). Once all bets are in, the announcer begins the race. He flips over the top card of the remaining deck; the Ace of that suit moves forward one link. The first horse to pass the ‘finish line’ (last link) is the winner, and that player gets to decide how to divvy up his bets. The losing horse owners have to consume their own bets.
This video explains the setup, betting and play perfectly:
Have fun!
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