Horse Race is a virtual racetrack with eight runners and a new race card before every start. Each card gives the horses a fresh strength, prints a form guide and a full set of odds, and then the race is run. You can back a horse to win, to finish in the top two, or to finish in the top three, on as many runners as you like. Unlike a real track, there is nothing hidden here. The odds come straight from each horse’s actual chance on this card, so you can read them as probabilities.
How to play
Read the card. Each row shows a runner (Red Comet, Blue Bolt, Snow Prince, Green Valley, Golden Dune, Royal Plum, Sunset Run and Sea Breeze), its Form in dots from ○○○○○ up to ●●●●●, and three odds boxes: Win, Top 2 and Top 3.
Place bets. Pick a chip, then tap any odds box to put it there. Each bet can be 10 to 1,000 credits, in tens, and a race takes up to 5,000 in total. You can back several horses and several bet types at once.
Race! Press the button and watch the field run. The finishing order is decided the moment you press it; the animation shows it. Winning bets are paid at the odds that were on the card.
Odds are decimal. They include your stake. A 20-credit bet at 6.50 returns 130: 110 profit plus your 20 back.
How a race card is built
Every runner gets a random strength for that race. The finishing order is then drawn one place at a time: the winner is picked in proportion to strength, second place from the remaining runners the same way, and so on. Strong horses win more often, but any runner can win.
The Form dots compare each horse with the favourite. Five dots marks the favourite or a horse close to it; one dot marks an outsider.
From those strengths the game works out each horse’s exact chance of finishing first, in the top two and in the top three. The odds are then set at 95% of the fair price, rounded down to the nearest 0.05. The shortest price on offer is 1.05:
odds = 0.95 ÷ chance, rounded down
So the odds come from this race’s runner strengths with a margin built in, and every bet on the card returns at most 95% of its stake on average. When a horse is a very heavy favourite, its chance in a bet (most often Top 3 or Top 2, very rarely even Win) can be so high that 0.95 ÷ chance would fall below 1.05. That bet is then closed for the race: its button shows a dash and can’t be pressed, the way a bookmaker takes a certain winner off the board.
Reading the odds as chances
Because of that formula, the odds tell you the probability almost directly: chance ≈ 0.95 ÷ odds.
| Odds shown | Approximate chance |
|---|---|
| 1.50 | 63% |
| 2.00 | 48% |
| 3.00 | 32% |
| 5.00 | 19% |
| 10.00 | 9.5% |
| 20.00 | 4.8% |
| 50.00 | 1.9% |
So an outsider at 20.00 wins about one race in twenty, and a Top 3 bet at 1.50 lands nearly two times in three.
Strategy
Value bets are rare and small. The odds already include the true chances, so there are no mispriced horses to find. Form, odds and chance all point to the same horse.
Choose how you want to win. Top 3 bets on strong horses win often and pay little. Win bets on outsiders lose most of the time and pay a lot. Apart from the rounding, the average return is about the same; the ride is very different.
Combining bets on one horse spreads risk. Win, Top 2 and Top 3 on the same runner pays something whenever it places, and pays all three when it wins.
Covering many horses doesn’t beat the edge. Betting on every runner guarantees a winner, but you pay the margin on almost every stake.
Each race stands alone. Strengths are redrawn for every race, so a horse that won last time is no more or less likely to win this one.
If you like quick racing bets, Greyhound Race runs a six-dog field with Win and Top 2 bets.
If you enjoy Horse Race, try Ice Palace or Irish Poker next.
