Horse Race Drinking Game

The Horse Race is an extremely exciting drinking game played with cards mostly in indoor gatherings or parties.

Inspired by betting on racing horses. This unique drinking game includes betting amounts of alcohol on any one of the four aces. If you don’t have a deck of cards try playing Flip, Sip or Strip.

Players 

3 – 12 Players

Gear Required

Horse race drinking game only requires:

• a deck of cards
• poker chips or any sort of instrument to place the bet. (We use beer bottle caps).

Plus, of course, lots of booze. 

Setup Horse Race Drinking Game

Select a player to be the announcer. The “announcer’ is the person who sets up the game.

The announcer has the responsibility to take out the aces of each suit from the deck and place them face side-up and side by side on one side of the table. These aces are called gates and they are also considered as the horses in the race. 

The announcer then shuffles up the deck and lays down a variable number of cards face side-down and side by side. These cards are called the links of the race. They are placed in such a way that they are perpendicular to the row of aces. This setup is in the shape of L.

How To Play Horse Race Drinking Game

Following are the 6 steps, describing the gameplay of Horse Race:

1. Before the game begins, each player bets on their ace/horse, after looking at the variable number of cards(links) on the table. More the number of a specific suit on the table, less the odds of it coming from the remaining deck. 
2. The announcer places chips beside the horse depending on the bets made. In a variation, the payout is 20 drinks for the first place, 15 for the second place, and 10 for the third place.
3. The announcer then starts taking out cards from the remaining deck.
4. A horse or ace would move forward if the card pulled out from the deck is from the same suit. For example, if the suit of the card put out by the announcer is a club, then the ace of clubs will move forward one step.
5. The announcer continues pulling out cards until a horse/ace crosses the final link. The first one to cross the links wins the race.
6. The winner of the race gets to distribute drinks to the losers, equal to the amount they bet on the horse. 

Variations

There are a couple of variations of Horse Race that are just as – if not more – thrilling as the main version.

The first one is referred to as Faltering. 

Each time the ace/horse moves up to a new position/link for the first time, the announcer flips the card face-down on the side of the link. The suit on the sideboard will move back one space/falter. Hence, if for example, there is an eight-links game, then there are eight chances when faltering can happen. This can change the result of the game. It is a rule that any horse/ace cannot go further back by faltering. 

The third one is Stumble, in which every ace moves forward by one space, except for the leader, if a wild card is flipped over, like the joker. 

Takeaway

Horse Race drinking game is an extremely fun one. You’ll definitely enjoying playing it.

So, what are you waiting for?