PLAAY at the Races: "And, (We're) OFF!..."
First, many thanks to all who've made the launch of PLAAY at the Race such a success! We're excited for our PLAAY Space 2026 Derby stream (04.30.26) which will happen a couple days before the real thing. We've created an updated 2026 derby file which includes the late additions to the race (horses and jockeys) and a gate order guide to help you set up your own simulation of the Big Race. More on that in a second.
Before we get into that, though, I wanted to post a couple of clarifications about the game, based on input from gamers over the past week or so...
First, a clarification on the chip rules. The chip rules are unchanged from the holiday version of PLAAY at the Races, chips can be used for quality and GO! challenges when challenging AND when defending. Probably most are playing it that way already. In the printed rules booklet, though, page 12, second bullet point, I somehow omitted the words "quality challenge" from the rules text. GAH! Here's how the sentence SHOULD read...
Hopefully most people are already familiar with the chip rules from both the holiday version of the horse racing game and its predecessor Red White & Blue Racin' and simply glossed over the missing words (like I apparently did! I’m very humbled). For newcomers to the game, I do apologize for any confusion.
Regarding the dual numbering methodology used in the 1978 and 2025 season sets (i.e., there are two of each number, one red and one black), I mentioned that the reason this was done was to preserve the structure of the betting odds calculations. Specifically, it's important that all sets have the same ranking hierarchy, 1-96. If I ranked the horses from 1-192 (for the '78 and 2025 sets) then the rankings would be way off if you mixed sets--horse #96 in the base game card set would get better odds than horse number 100 in the 1978 or 2025 horse sets--which is wrong, as horse #100 in those larger sets is an average horse while horse #96 in the base game is a "nag."
I've left it up to the gamer to decide how to break ties when they occur. You can either say red is higher than black, or vice-versa, or roll a decider die, or just call it a tie and give the horses the same odds. Probably the latter is simplest and fairest, although any of the methods will work.
Updated 2026 Derby Cards
As I mentioned, I've created an updated 2026 Derby file which includes the late additions to the race (horses and jockeys) and a gate order guide to help you set up your own simulation of the Big Race. It's a four-page file vs. the earlier two-pager. The first page includes the latest post order, jockey assignments and betting odds, along with the corresponding card number for each horse/jockey in our set.
If you've already printed and trimmed the earlier file, you'll only need to print/trim page three to get the new jockey and horse cards--we've left the other files unchanged.
Obviously, there could be some last-minute changes to the line-up. But this will be our final update before the actual race. We'll use these cards for our own Derby stream 04.30.26.
This will be our second run for the "virtual" roses; the first one happened at IndiCON a couple of weeks ago, with Silent Tactic posting a comfortable win. Interestingly, Silent Tactic just got scratched from the real-life race! So, we'll see how it goes for us the second time around--we'll definitely have a different winner! See you at the race track!
