Winner's Circle
Designed by Reiner Knizia
Published by Face2Face Games

Overview


Winner's Circle is a racing and betting game designed by Reiner Knizia. This review deals with the Face2Face-published version, which is a reprint of--with, I gather, a few tweaks on--the Alea-published Royal Turf. This won't be a comparative review, as I haven't played and don't own the earlier version. Rather, I'll be looking at Winner's Circle on its own merits, which are fairly considerable if you're looking for a light game with a pretty heavy element of chance.

Components


The rather large Winner's Circle box contains a sturdy four-panel hinged board representing a racetrack, an "infield" (where the betting is recorded), and the gates, numbered 1 to 7 (with spaces for the horse cards). The horse cards are thick tiles printed on one side with the gamebox art and on the other with the name of a horse and four ratings (horse head, jockey hat, saddle, and horseshoe). Six single-color, decently sculpted plastic horse pawns are used to move around the track. Small but sturdy money tokens, in denominations of $50, $100, and $500, are used to pay off bets (and to pay money back to the bank). There are also small betting tokens (numbered 0, 1, 1, and 2) in six player colors and a little horse token in each player color to help the participants remember who's who. Rounding out the components is a unique wooden six-sided die, three faces of which feature the horse head and the other three faces representing the hat, saddle, and horseshoe found on each horse card. The rules are printed in three separate four-page color pamphlets, one each for English, French, and Spanish. The components are pretty comfortably held by the box's plastic organizer, although there's no obvious place to put the player tokens. (I suggest putting them in the horse compartments.) The box itself is sturdy enough, although it's not thick enough really to stack anything else on top without bowing the lid some. (Complaints on BGG about the box quality are, in my opinion, quite overblown.)


Really, the only problem with the components is that, in the interest of keeping the horse colors natural looking, some of the horses are too similarly colored and are hard to distinguish in even fairly good lighting. It may not be immediately obvious from the above photo, where the contrast looks pretty good, but the tan- and pea-colored horses are, at least in my games, often confused by players, and we have to make a special effort to tell them apart. This isn't enough to make me want to shelve the game, but it does make me envious of those who've painted the horses.

(Speaking of, the painted Winner's Circle horses are part of some of my favorite BGG pictures.)

Object

The point of Winner's Circle is to win the most money via betting on horses to finish in the top three spots in each of three races.

Gameplay

In the standard game, each player picks one of the six player colors. Each of the seven horses is placed on its corresponding starting spot on the board at the beginning of each race. The starting spots are fixed by color and staggered from the starting line (so the black horse always starts in the seventh position, while the white horse always starts in the first position). The 28 horse cards are shuffled, and one horse card is randomly placed on each of the seven gates. A "pace chip" (worth $100) is placed on space 18, halfway around the 36-space track, and the first horse to reach that spot in each race is worth $100 or $200 extra if it finishes in the top three.

In the first race, one randomly chosen player is the first to place a bet; betting then proceeds clockwise. In the standard game, only the 1, 1, and 2 betting chips are used, and the bets are placed face-up, one each in three successive turns. Each bet placed is what the game calls a "show bet"--a prediction that the given horse will finish in one of the top three ("money") spots. The 1s represent single bets, while the 2 is a double-value bet. Each player can only place one bet (either a 1 or a 2 in the standard game) on a given horse, helping ensure that there are a variety of people with a vested interest in seeing each horse finish in the top three (although that works better with more players than with fewer). In the second and third race, the player with the most money bets first.

The races themselves are run in a simple sequence. Each player, beginning with the first bettor, rolls the six-sided die. Depending on the roll, a horse head (3 in 6 chance) or a hat, saddle, or horseshoe (1 in 6 chance each) will turn up. The player must then move one of the seven horses, advancing it a number of spaces equal to the value of the matching symbol on the horse's card.

For example, if the player chose to move Armed (pictured at top left) and a horse head was rolled, Armed would be advanced 4 spaces. If a hat, saddle, or horseshoe were rolled instead, Armed would be moved 4, 1, or 12 spaces, respectively. To put this in perspective, Armed has a 4 in 6 chance to move 4 spaces, a 1 in 6 chance to move just 1 space, and a 1 in 6 chance to move a blistering 12 spaces. Each horse card has different statistics. Some horses, for example, are weaker in the horse head category but have even better "sprinting" numbers, or more than one good sprinting value.

Once each horse has been moved, its card is flipped over, and that horse may not be moved again until all seven have been moved, whereupon all the cards are flipped over. So, over the course of seven turns, the options about which horse to move narrow until the full range of horses is available once again.

One additional wrinkle is that, in the standard game, no horse can occupy the same space, meaning that horses can only up to the value rolled or the last clear space before that, whichever value is lower. So if Armed is normally entitled to move 4 spaces but there is only one free space between him and a pack of three horses in front of him, he can only move 1 space.

The first horse to cross the finish line, 36 spaces from the (staggered) start line, is the "win" horse and is placed on the number one spot in the infield. The second and third horse to cross the finish line are placed on spots two and three, respectively. Once the third horse crosses, the race is over, the last-place horse is determined (and placed on the number seven spot), and the money from the bets is paid out (and the penalty, described below, collected for the bank).

The money paid out to the winning horses depends on three factors: first, what place the horse finished in (the winner paying out more than the place and show horses); second, how many people bet on that horse to finish in the top three (the more people backing the horse, the lower the payout); and, third, whether the players put down a 1 or a 2 bet on the horse (each 2 bet counting as two bets for the purposes of determining how many bets were placed on the horse). If the "pace horse" is one of the top three, each player having bet on it gets an extra $100 ($200 for a 2 bet). An interesting twist on the win-place-show formula is that the last-place horse costs each player betting on it $100 for a 1 bet and $200 for a 2 bet.

After the first race is complete, the second and third are set up in the same way, with seven new horses each time. In the third race, the money paid out for the first three horses and paid into the bank for the seventh-place horse is doubled.

Official variants

The directions provide some official variants to the standard game.

* Hidden bets: Instead of placing bets face-up, all bets are placed face-down, leaving opposing players unsure of who bet what on what horse. To further obfuscate things, the 0 bet token comes into play, meaning each player appears to bet on four horses but really bets on only three. I highly recommend this variant for all but training games and games with young kids, as it adds uncertainty regarding who's genuinely pulling for a particular horse.

* Royal Turf: All seven horses must have a different horse head value to ensure a better distribution of movement rates. This is important because the horse head comes up half the time.

* Crowded field: Instead of having a staggered start, all seven horses start at the same spot. Unlike in the regular game, more than one horse can be in a given spot during the race.

* Alternative payouts: The number of bettors on each winning horse is determined not by counting up the 1s and 2s but counting instead the number of unique betting tokens (including the 0s) placed on each of the top three horses.

Analysis

Although there's a heavy dose of chance in it, Winner's Circle is not devoid of strategy. This comes in several forms, a few of which are described below.

Do I bet on sprinters or steady runners?: Some horses have good horse head values, but most have lower horse head values but high "sprint" values in one or two low-probability categories. Should I bet on the slow-but-steady beasts, or do I take a chance that I'll turn up that 1-in-6 roll a couple times (or that one of my fellow players, nearing the end of the seven-horse cycle, will roll my "lucky" symbol and be forced to move my horse for me)? Or do I do some of both?

Do I bet on horses others have already bet on, or do I try to keep to myself?: Sharing horses with others means that multiple people have a vested interest in seeing the horse win, place, or show, but it also means dividing the earnings by more people. The reverse is true if you go the other way.

Do I move my horse or sabotage someone else's?: If I roll a symbol that will advance one of my horses a long way, the decision may be pretty simple (unless that horse is only going to move up to the middle of the pack and isn't in danger of finishing last). But if I roll a symbol that doesn't really move any of my competitive horses very far, I might chose to move an opponent's horse (i.e., one I haven't bet on) if I can slow up his or her horse with a low result. For instance, if I roll a horse head, I may choose to move one of my horses, but I could instead chose to move the lead horse (which I haven't bet on) the 1 space he's entitled to from a horse head roll.

Do I move one of my horses a little bit, or do I risk that my opponent will have to move him a long way for me?: Say I roll a horse head, and there are only two horses left face-up. A horse head will only move my horse 2 spaces. I could either take those 2 spaces (if they're open) or move the other horse. The next player will be forced to move my horse, since there's only one still left face-up, and maybe she'll roll the horseshoe that'll move me 20 spaces.

Do I try to keep one of my horses out of last place, or do I try to focus on the top three spots?: Ending up in last place is gonna cost you, but focusing too much on staying out of last place may keep you from paying enough attention to moving your competitive horses forward and slowing the movement (via disadvantageous rolls) of others' horses.

Conclusion

Winner's Circle is a light, entertainingly themed, and well-executed game that should appeal to both hardcore gamers (as, perhaps, a gameday starter, ender, or light break, though it's too long to be a real filler) and to casual gamers, who, in my experience, can be drawn in by the quality components, the fun theme, and the easy-to-learn mechanics. The random element in the form of the die may put off some strategy-heavy gamers while simultaneously appeal to casual gamers not looking for a major challenge or not used to deeper games. I've found this game works well with crowds of people paying half-attention and those concentrating a bit more carefully.

I do think the game fades slightly in the home stretch, though, after a strong start. For me, the three-times-around mechanic gets a bit dull after a while, and the doubling-up in the last round really isn't enough to relieve that sense of monotony for me. The mechanics are easily grasped but not terribly deep, and while there are some decisions to be made, the game does feel a bit chancy.

The game also works better, I think, with more players. If too few people are playing (say, two or three), there are probably going to be horses no one bets on and no one cares about, especially if the face-up betting method is used.

All told, though, I'm glad I bought the game, and I advise those who might find a light, flavorful race game appealing to take a good look at Winner's Circle.