Horserace Drinking Game Rules

horserace drinking game cards

Get togethers can be relaxing and a nice time to catch up with friends. However, sometimes you don’t want to just sit there and chat, you want to have fun and play games.

Well instead of just sitting and playing cards (which if you have ever been to a BBQ you’ll know that this is an essential activity) you can play this one with the same amount of people and have some drinks.

But this isn’t one that fast moving for the most part like something like flip cup, this is a bit slower paced, but it could result in a lot of alcohol consumption, so be careful.

As a disclaimer, when drinking and partying that you should be doing so responsibly. This means staying the night where you are, finding a designated driver, requesting a Lyft/Uber, or taking public transportation back home. Don’t make the mistake of drinking and driving because you are not only risking your life but potentially the life of another.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get into the game itself.

What you Need to Play

  • Drinks (but of course)
  • A full deck of cards, take out the jokers and the extra cards
  • A table or other flat surface

How to Set Up the Table

1. Look through the deck and pick out the Aces. Line the Aces along the bottom of the surface face up. They should be in a straight line. These are called the horses. Then lay 8 cards vertically along the side (make it look like an L shape) face down. These are called the links. Setup complete.

2. Pick horses and players. There should be 4 players, one for each of the suits/horses. Take the bets which should include how many drinks and on what suit. Examples:

    2.1. I’ll take 5 shots on spades
    2.2. I’ll take 2 beers on hearts

3. Pick who is going to be the announcer. This could be someone who is actually playing or it could be a separate person. The announcer now leads the game.

4. Start by flipping over the top card of the remaining the deck. The movement of the horses are based on the suits of the cards, it doesn’t matter what the card itself is. Whatever the suit is that is flipped over is the horse that moves up to a new link.

5. When a card moves up a link that hasn’t been reached, the link card is flipped over. Whatever suit that the card is, that horse moves back one link (you don’t have to move if you are still at the beginning).

6. Continue with this pattern, flipping the cards from the deck, moving the horses, and flipping the links, until one horse makes it to the last link. That person is the winner.

Sort out the Bets

Now the winner has passed the finish line and the bets have to be handled. The winners can either take their wage and hand it to the losers if they so choose and the losers have to drink those.

In addition to that the losers also must drink double the number of drinks that they wagered. Now these rules can be changed, they don’t have to take double the wages, especially if they are high wages (such as 5 shots, 10 shots could be dangerous).

That’s the basis of the game and it is easy to play. You can either do smaller wages if there are only a few people playing or more if there will be a lot of breaks in between each person playing.

Horse Race Game Video Explanation

Have fun with this one and treat it like a horserace, I’m sure the announcer could have a lot of fun with this. Have fun and again drink responsibly.