I like going to horse races. My grandfather went daily during the thoroughbred season, and taught me how to read a program and bet at he tender age of 13. He was always on the verge of "cracking the system," especially after a winter spent reading the previous season's programs. He never did, but we sure enjoyed playing the ponies.

Winner's Circle captures some of that enjoyment. You do have to consider carefully your bets, although with none of the intricacies involved in reading a pogram. The start and finish are crucial, and there is lots of excitement about where your horse is going to finish. It is a fairly simple game, but with a nice balance between furthering your own plans and sticking it to your opponents.

Bits:

The game comes with seven plastic, unpainted horses. They are quite detailed and impressive. Their colours are the colours of actual horses, but are not always closely matched to their respective paddock colours on the game board. Depending on the light, you may have trouble distinguishing who is who.

The gameboard itself is okay. The horses in the paddocks are a little fuzzy, and the infield artwork is a bit smudgey. There is also the shadow of a non-existent flag.

The money is in the form of smallish tiles, which is a lot easier to deal with than paper money. The betting chits are small squares, representing single, double and fake bets, or bluffs. The horse cards are nice thick tiles, seven of which are placed in the paddocks above the track to indicate which seven horses will be in the race. These cards are quite basic, but are easy to read, containing all the relevant information for each horse's movement.

Lastly, you get a nice big wooden die, with black icons on it of a horsehead, helmet, horseshoe, and saddle. The box is a little flimsy.

Set Up:

The track is 36 spaces long, and the horse's starting positions are spaces 30-36. Their starting positions are fixed. That is black always begins in position 30, dark brown in postion 31, etc. The horses themselves are only placeholders for the horse cards, which indicate the specific horse and these change with each race. For example, the black horse might be Man O' War in the first race, but Regret in the second. Seven horse cards are laid out in their respective paddocks for each race.

Player do not start with money, but instead are given betting chits: two singles, one double, and one 0 (a decoy bet). A special $100 token is placed at the halfway point (18th space) and the first horse to reach that space, picks up the bonus.

Then you are ready to race.

Play/Rules:

The game consists of three races, and the object of the game is win more money than your opponents.

First you place your bets on the horses you think will win. Horses move around the track based on the die roll, and that particular horse's stats.

The die consists of three horseheads, one saddle, one helmet, and one horseshoe. Thus, you have a 50% chance of rolling a horsehead, and a 16 2/3% chance of rolling one of the other icons.

The horse card's stats, however, determine how many spaces the horse actually moves, and they are different for each of the 28 horses. For example, the stats for Top Flight are:

Horsehead: 1
Helmet: 3
Saddle: 12
Horseshoe: 12

Whereas for Equipoise, the stats are:

Horsehead: 6
Helmet: 5
Saddle: 3
Horseshoe: 4

So when you roll you may want to move a horse you have bet on to get it closer to the finish line, or move an opponent's horse so that it is less likely to finish well. For example, if you rolled a horsehead, you might want to move Equipoise six, if you have a bet on him, or move Top Flight only 1 if you don't have a bet on him, and your opponent's do.

No two horses may occupy the same space, so if the field is crowded, your horse may not be able to complete its movement, or may not be able to move at all. This can be especially effective in slowing down other horses.

When a horse has moved, its respective horse card is flipped over in its paddock, so that each horse moves once per round. When every horse has moved, all the cards are flipped over and a new round begins.

Payouts are made for the first three finishers (win, place and show). The better the placement, the more money you get, but this is modified by how may people bet on the horse: the fewer the people who have bet on the horse, the more money you make.

If you bet on the last placed horse (the race is over as soon as you determine the third place horse), you must pay $100, or $200 if you made a double bet. If your horse picked up the $100 bonus, then you get an extra $100 if it placed; $200 if you made a double bet on it. The fake bets have no effect on payouts.

In the third race, all bets are doubled, so your double bet chip is worth four times the ususual payout. At the end of the third race, whoever has the most money is the winner.

Strategy/Tactics:

There is not a whole lot of strategy in this game, but there are enough tricks to make it fun and interesting.

In laying bets, the goal is cover yourself for all possibilities: making sure that if you roll a horsehead, you have a horse that will move far; if you roll the other icons, you also have a horse that will move far.

There will usually be horses to sabotage too when you get a particular roll, and ruining other people's bets is just as important as furthering your own. Depending on how many people you have playing, someone else may also want to move your horse if they have bet on it, or be forced to if yours is the only horse left to be moved. Slowing down other horses, especially a couple of turns in a row can help your cause more.

We always play with hidden bets, and do not allow players to look at their bets after they are placed. The fake bet can be a very effective trouble maker. The more people that bet on a horse, the better chance it has because more players will be co-operating to get that horse to win. Place your decoy on a popular horse might encourage others to do so, and help you to sabotage more opponents.

The decoy bet can also be a good distractor. I sometimes place it on a longshot with few other bets on it, and play that horse well in the first part of the race. The flak gets directed to that horse because every thinks it will pay well. That can help distract attention from what your real plan is.

The starting position of the horse has some influence, as the horses with the better starting position are often favoured. However, I've found that the horses at the back of the pack, can work out quite well. They are less of a target because of their poor starting position; more important, their disadvantage can be quickly erased if you can move them out of the pack at the very beginning of the race, where they can get in the way of those behind them.

Starting position does make a difference if a horse without very high numbers is in the back. Some horses are all rounders with good, but not high numbers, for all the icons. It can be hard to get this kind of horse up from the back of the pack, without a concerted effort. If they have at least one high number (7+) for an icon, they have a much better shot. I almost always place at least a single bet on one of the horses at the back of the pack.

Some horses can be considered longshots. For example, Twenty Grand moves 15 spaces on horseshoe. He can get ahead of the pack in a hurry with the right roll, but is also likely to be targeted for a low roll if he is in striking distance. Depending on the field, it may be worth making a bet on the long shot, just in case.

Of course, sometimes your best laid plans will be frustrated.

Conlusion:

In some ways the betting is similar to real betting, similar to covering the different possibilities in exactors and triactors, and straight bets, although there are not nearly as many factors to consider as the real thing.

This is a very good gateway game: easy to learn, players can socialize and trash talk as they play, and it is very fun. It can be quite intense too. The first time my cousin played, he practically rubbed all the paint off the chits while considering his bets.

So the fun in this game really isn't really in the odds on the horses themselves, but in the odds of your plans working out against everyone else's.

I give this game a 7.