Hot Streak

Cartoon mascots race down a track and you bet on them. The race is a deck of cards, one per runner plus a few random ones, all shown before betting. You draft two betting tickets, each played safe or flipped to the risky side for a bigger payout or loss. Then everyone secretly slips one card from their hand into the race deck to bend the odds. Shuffle and reveal one card at a time. Runners move, swerve into each other, turn around, or fall over, and a fallen runner knocked again is out. When the podium is full, bets pay out. Three races, then count your money. It is gambling on a system everyone has tampered with, and the yelling starts by card three. Twenty minutes, a two-minute teach, fine from age six, and the first game we reach for when a table of five wants noise.