Across The Board

When I was a little girl, I went to the horse races a lot. I had a great aunt who went a lot, and she took me along with her quite often, and I really enjoyed it. I like gambling, I like horses, so it was a nice mesh of things I enjoyed to make one thing I really enjoyed. Despite having not been to the horse races for years now, sadly, I still enjoy it and would like to go back some day. But you know what's even cooler? Bringing the horse races to you!

In 1975, MPH Games Co released a "board game" titled "Across The Board: Horse Racing Game", and the reason why board game is in quotations will become clear enough very very soon. This is going to be somewhat of a weird post, but please bare with me. Across The Board is technically a board game. If you looked at its packaging, it wouldn't look out of place whatsoever on the shelf next to Monopoly. But it actually doesn't have a board. Hell, it even says on the front of the box "as advertised in Readers Digest", every grandparents favorite magazine. And unlike most board games, which take at max 5 to 10 minutes to set up and then maybe a half hour to play at the longest (and that's a big maybe), Across The Board can run for 60 minutes. It's a very in depth complex game featuring a lot of math and including 3 to 7 players, which is really large for a board game.

But as you can clearly see from the image I've included here, there's no board, as stated. It's all paperwork and paper money and a lot and lot of numbers. I will now copy/paste what Board Game Geek's site has as the description:

Players choose which of the four racetracks will be used for the game. Each player is handed a copy of the appropriate race form (which should be studied!). The eleven racehorses, which are numbered two through twelve, are randomized and are bought, one at a time, by the players in an open auction. Money spent in the auction will be brought back into the game during the third, fifth and eighth races.

Eight races make a complete game and each follows the same procedure. Each player, in turn, has the option to make as many bets as one wants but each bet is made “across the board.” All bets are made in 150-skin (the game’s monetary unit) increments: 50 to win, 50 to place and 50 to show. After everyone has placed their bets, the money is divided as equally as possible into seven stacks.

After all bets have been placed, the race is run. A horse has completed a circuit of the track when five Xs have been placed next to it. Sometimes horses begin with some Xs and sometimes the favorites, horses 6, 7 and 8, need an extra X. When a player rolls the dice, that player may give the horse rolled an X and pass on the dice or give that horse a / (half-X) and roll again to that horse an X. When three horses have finished the race, the owner(s) of the winning horse and winning bettors are paid. The player with the most money at the end of the game is the winner.

Across the Board features a pari-mutual betting system to mimic a real racetrack. There are no fixed odds. The winners win what the losers lost. That makes Across the Board unique among horse racing games.

As someone who can't do math to save her life, this game, much as it might appeal to me, is unplayable. But I enjoy the fact that board games can really run the gamut on being just about anything. They have so much potential, and that's partially what makes me so sad to see them fall so far out of favor as they have these days. I know they aren't completely abandoned, I know tabletop games have made a big resurgence and have solid growth, but overall it isn't the same as it was when I was a kid. I love the idea of horse racing board games, man. Sadly, nowhere can I find any information whatsoever on the designer or the artist for the game, and that's a real big bummer. I wish I could credit them.

But, that aside, I simply appreciate the fact that not only does the concept of horse racing board games exist, but that they exist in almost mass quantity. As I delved more into researching this game, I wound up uncovering a mass of other horse racing board games of one kind or another, and that made me incredibly happy. And on top of that, it really makes me wonder why we don't have more board games based on things like this. Things that are from the real world. If you could have a horse racing board game, then chances are equally as good that you could somehow finagle a board game out of something equally interesting, like dodgeball or a convoy. These are merely examples, of course, I'm just saying that the possibilities are there and are endless.

There's an entire world out there just waiting to be adapted into a board game, honestly. And while "Across The Board" may not be the most fun board game ever, in fact I doubt it's anymore engaging than Pit (which I'll likely be covering next week as a comparison to this), it's still cool to see that there were people out there willing to take risks and be strange and do something different. Obviously the argument could be made that this is more a "card game" than a "board game", and I wouldn't shoot that argument down either, because it has some merit. But, that being said, the line that separates the two is so razor thin that I don't think it really matters. It's a game that has pieces and comes in a box. The board is merely a way to easily categorize them from one another. And while I, of course, enjoy the other horse racing board games that feature an actual track and pieces to use, like that almost Cribbage like image I used at the start of this post, I still appreciate that "Across The Board" was original and new, and deserves to be remembered solely for trying something that hadn't been tried before.

And I must admit, even being as incompetent as I am at math, there's a part of me that wants to give "Across The Board" a fair shot, simply because it's so unique. Though, if we're being honest, I'd prefer to go to an actual horse race.

I love board games, but come on, I'm not a complete dweeb.