A Day at the Races

A Day at the Races is a novel if somewhat random attempt at creating the excitement of a race meet complete with betting on the family room table.

This game comes from the Crown and Andrews stable well-noted for their tabletop cricket simulation "Test Match" which has stood the test of time as the benchmark children’s cricket game that delivers strategy and fun through a heavily TOY based game. e.g.: manually triggering your bowler to bowl a ball which the batsman needs to manually trigger and hit to toy fieldsmen.

However a Day at the Races involves you clamping one end of the racetrack to the end of your table with two provided metal clamps and then pulling a tensioned green vinyl racetrack out until you can hook it over the other end of the table. Then it is a matter of setting up the other colorful bits such as the starting stalls, the finishing post and of course the five lovely plastic horses complete with weighted swinging jockeys.

Players then present their stall cards to get their starting places and have an opportunity to bet on who they think will hit the finish line first.

From here it is a matter of turning a crank at the starting line which causes the track to vibrate under the horses propelling them slowly forward, until a winner emerges.

As far as I can determine this seems entirely random (although the weighted jockeys seem to behave differently each time). Though the game would be a great beer and pretzels action affair or for those loving horse racing. Due to the random nature and betting I wouldn't really recommend for youngsters.