Ready Set Bet Review – All the Thrill, None of the Smell

May and June are my designated party months when most of my friends and family have birthdays and anniversaries. Prior to COVID, we would get together often and play our fair share of party games. This year was the first since 2019, that we’ve continued this tradition. And there was no better way to do it than with Board Game Geek’s best party game of 2022; Ready Set Bet.

Ready Set Bet is a real-time game, but there’s not a sand timer in sight. Instead, you’re watching a horse race carried out by an app, or someone frantically rolling dice at one end of the table.

Everyone else is hovering around a large betting board with a handful of wagering chips, ready to make a bet. As they only have from the second the horses rush from the starting gate, to when three of them cross the no more bets line, to place these tokens on the board.

This board is filled with spots, each representing the bets you can take and the multiplier you get if it wins. Bets include your standard suite of which horse is going to come first, second, or third, to random side bets such as whether the 10-horse will beat the 9-horse.

There are also exotic finish cards, where instead of individual horses, you bet on the field. For instance, the Photo Finish card pays out if 3rd place horse loses by 3 or fewer spaces.

The amount of different types of bets is staggering. And honestly, I’m surprised it’s not sponsored by SportsBet or one of the other parasitic betting companies.

However, the rule that raises Ready Set Bet above straight gambling is that only one player can take on each bet. Furthermore, the later you take a bet, the worse the odds you get. Meaning throughout the race, you’re always on edge, wondering if you should take the bet now, or bet later.

Once a race ends, you pay out the winners – and sometimes take money from the losers – and then give everyone a special ability card to help them in the races to come.

After four races, everyone counts their fat stacks of cash. With the player with the fattest stack taking first place.

And they’re off!

Running the race in Ready Set Bet caught me by surprise. It’s just rolling two dice, adding their value, and moving that horse one space forward. But when there’s a table full of people watching your every move, feeling their excitement elevates the die rolling, and makes it incredibly fun.

Specifically, because the races are usually so close.

Being random dice rolls, basic probability tells us this shouldn’t be the case. But in Ready Set Bet, whenever a number is rolled twice in a row, that horse gets extra movement based on how improbable it is. For example, the most probable horse gets no extra movement. While the least likely horses to move get an extra 3 movements if rolled twice in a row.

Given this balancing, it’s any horse’s race. Making for fantastic and crazy moments where horses can come from behind, or peter out just before the finish line. It makes you forget all about the dice rolling and puts you in the grandstand, watching and cheering these horses on.

All without the smell of drunken race-goers and horse manure.

Meanwhile, as you’re watching the race unfold, you’re also trying to figure out where to place your bets. Seeing people react to big shifts in the race and throw down their chips, makes you want to do the same. Because, if you don’t, all the good spots might be gone.

It’s hard to express how much pressure you feel during these key moments. When everyone rushes to one bet, then quickly away to the next best thing. You get caught up in the excitement, and make some awful choices because of it. Whether it’s your mistake or someone else’s, it makes you laugh, because you can empathise with the decision.

Now if that isn’t a glowing endorsement of a party game – I don’t know what is.

More players makes it shine

Ready Set Bet is the most complete betting simulation I’ve encountered. With so many different types of bets on offer, it can be overwhelming when you first look at it all.

Thankfully, rather than dumping all these options onto new players, you can gradually introduce the prop bets, exotic finishes, and player powers.

However, that doesn’t help when paying out all the bets takes an age to do. This might be an unfair statement since they’ve streamlined it a lot. But when you’re that hopped up on adrenaline, every second feels like five.

By far the biggest complaint of Ready Set Bet is how small the racetrack is. It’s meant to be the focal point of the game, where everyone gets the information to make their wild bets. Yet the racetrack is so small that Antman is happily playing in the Quantum Realm.

Jokes aside, with a large group, players couldn’t read the numbers on the horses from across the table. And made some bad bets based on faulty information. Furthermore, we rarely had a race where the horses weren’t knocked over by imprecise fingers.

Otherwise, Ready Set Bet suffers as all party games do when it comes to player count. The box says 2-9, but I wouldn’t play this with less than 5. With fewer players, there’s not enough competition for the spots on the board. So the game feels subdued and doesn’t reach the same climax as it does with more players.

Although, is it a party if you only have 5 people?

Putting a pin in that philosophical question, Ready Set Bet has now taken over the premier spot of betting games within my group. Sorry, Long Shot: The Dice Game. The excitement it generates for both the race caller and horse betters is unmatched. I just hope they release a bigger racing track sometime.