PLAAY CONNECT 12.09.25

Last CONNECT of the year—here comes the big finish!…

THIS Week: Online Christmas Party!

It's become an annual tradition! Join us online this Thursday evening 12.11.25 6pm MT (8pm ET) for festive holiday fun...

• The Twelve Furlongs of Christmas

That's right, we'll break out our holiday horse racing game "PLAAY at the Races" and run a special twelve furlong race between Santa's nine reindeer, ridden by elves! These cards were created by PLAAY Gamer Brian Hoxsey--we were going to make our OWN cards, but the work was already done! THANKS Brian!

• Hit the TRIFECTA and win a PLAAY Games Gift Card! Here's how it will work: use this link to enter your choices for win, place and show. We'll put a $60 PLAAY Games gift card up for grabs if anyone gets it right--all three horses in the exact finish order--they get the card. If more than one person hits it, we'll divide the card (that's why we chose $60--equally divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6!)

Download Brian's reindeer and elf/jockey cards here and look them over before the race. NOTE: Only Pete Peppermint has a jockey SKILL rating (10), all the other elves get a default SKILL rating of 7.

Here's the gate order (and elf/jockey assignments), which may help you place your bet, there's a photo below as well...

• Gate 1: Dancer (Syd Sloeberry)

• Gate 2: Blitzen (Clove Snowbubbles)

• Gate 3: Donner (Pete Peppermint)

• Gate 4: Prancer (Juniper Jingleberry)

• Gate 5: Cupid (Oren Fruitsleigh)

• Gate 6: Comet (Piper Twinkle)

• Gate 7: Rudolph (Figgy Forthwind)

• Gate 8: Dasher (Hadrian Ivy)

• Gate 9: Vixen (Frosty Nougat)

Here’s the link for entering your trifecta, please enter only ONCE! (Duplicate entries, you'll be disqualified.) Deadline for entry is 4pm MT Thursday!

• White Elephant Gift Exchange

We've done this for the past several years, always a hoot! If you've mailed in a gift for the exchange, your name is on the list below. If you didn't, you can still participate: we have EXTRA gifts and we'll have a half dozen "wild card" participants who we'll choose from the chat room. All you gotta do is show up! We'll have a bowl full of numbered Christmas tree ornaments, each ornament corresponds to a gift under the tree. Each participant will have the choice of "stealing" an already-opened gift OR choosing a wrapped gift from under the tree. The "wild card" folks will go first, then we'll get to the list.

Here's a list of people who have sent in White Elephant gifts, in order from picking first to picking last (Please let us know ASAP if you're missing from the list!). We're going in reverse order of when the gift was received at PLAAY HQ. Dave Jackson has the honor of picking last.

[22] Colin Garlick; [21] Kirk Bollinger; [20] Brandan Baker; [19] Al Wilson; [18] Brian Hoxsey; [17] Dan Garlick; [16] Ray Price; [15] Richard Beach; [14] Bill McGrath; [13] Mike Cravens; [12] Steve Roies; [11] John Wise; [10] Mike Fitzgerald; [9] Kevin Sieg; [8] Marc Caren; [7] Dave Little; [6] Paul Fay; [5] Brien Aronov; [4] Pete Adams; [3] Matt Dante; [2] Derek Jones; [1] Dave Jackson.

Holiday Sale Recap

Sam and I would like to say a big THANK YOU for everyone's support, encouragement and (especially!) patience during our annual holiday sale. We have now shipped ALL of the holiday orders, which should ensure that they arrive well before "the big day." For a more detailed look-back at the sale, check out last week's PLAAY Space YouTube stream…

COMING SOON: (Quite a Few Things....)

We have golf, hoops, NASCAR and baseball in the pipeline for the New Year, we'll have more info about this in the next CONNECT.

Photo Finish

"How'd you like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?" Well...that's not EXACTLY where Mike Fitzgerald is hanging out in the photo (it's actually Mexico) but the sentiment works so let's run with it! Appropriately, Mike is wearing his FLOTA jersey and enjoying a holiday latte and bagel.

Christmas is for kids (of all ages!), here’s Bruce Toussaint’s grandson Warren looking over the 2025 Pro Football Fury cards that grandpa gave him as an early Christmas gift!

That's it for this CONNECT, see you Thursday evening for some holiday cheer!