The Races
Race your own horse against other souls for a pot of gloo. This is a five horse sprint on a track of its own, and it is a different thing from the pub racebook, which bets on the real $GLUE track. Here you are the one running.
The race board
Racing starts at the race board, at the town stables. One soul posts a heat and picks the entry fee. Others join. A heat runs with 2 to 5 racers, and it starts the moment the fifth seat fills, or on the poster's word. Each heat runs on its own private copy of the track, so nobody outside can interfere.
Four leagues
The fee you pick is the league you race in:
| Entry | League | Ranked |
|---|---|---|
| free | practice | no |
| 1,000 gloo | 1K LEAGUE | yes |
| 10,000 gloo | 10K LEAGUE | yes |
| 1,000,000 gloo | 1M LEAGUE | yes |
A practice heat costs nothing and pays nothing. It does not touch your record and never ranks you. The three paid leagues do all three: they pay a pot, they count on your career, and they put you on the race boards once you have 5 settled heats behind you.
The pot
Every racer's fee goes into one pot, and the winner takes it, minus a 5% cut that is burned. Cancel a heat, or fail to start one, and every fee comes back, exactly once. No fee is ever minted or lost.
The board is patient with the living and strict with the absent. A posted heat waits 15 seconds for its roster, then runs without the no-shows and refunds them. A heat nobody starts auto-cancels and refunds after 10 minutes. And once the first racer crosses, everyone else has 20 seconds to place before the heat settles, so one quitter cannot hold four finishers on the line.
How you win
The track is a long lane, run west to east, and first across the finish wins. There is no rubber banding and no luck: the race is decided by how you spend stamina.
- Gallop to go fast, but galloping drains stamina, and a horse with empty legs is slow.
- Hurdles cross the lane, four of them. Cross one on the ground and you stumble, cut to 40% speed for most of a second. Jump it (Space) and you clear it clean, for nothing.
- Mud halves your speed. Go around it if you can.
Read the lane, save your legs for the end, and jump the hurdles. That is the whole race.
The honest note
The pot is the racers' own fees, nothing more. The house takes only the 5% burn, so a race is close to zero sum, a game of skill between players.