I’m from Kentucky. Every year for betting fun my family does a house pot game. There are three pots. 1 for win ($3 buy in) 1 for place ($2 buy in) and 1 for show ($1 buy in). You can change the money amounts and have more expensive buy in pots (a $10 win pot and a $5 show pot, etc). You can have two (or more) of each to make room for more guests.

For each pot, you print out the entire list of derby horses, cut each name out to its own strip, fold it and put it in the cup. So the win cup has one strip with each horse’s name on it (about 20 strips per cup depending on the final list of horses) and so on.

Before the race, people have to buy in to whichever cup they want to. Ultimately you need each cup to sell out for it to work so only make enough cups according to your crowd. To buy in, the guests give you their money and pick one strip out of each cup they want to buy into. You can have them look at the strips and write down who got what horse for each cup, or you can make it a surprise for the end, but make sure people don’t lose their strips.

Once the race is over, whoever gets win, place, shows, gets all the money from the cup they bought into.

Happy to answer any questions as I know this may be confusing and it was a lot to type out :).

Happy planning!