What is HHR, or Historic Horse Racing?

Historic horse racing, also known as “instant racing,” comprises pari-mutuel horse races that have been run in the past which are represented by an entertainment display that mimics the results of the orders of finish. Players at multiple terminals and for some games, even at multiple locations, bet into a common array of pari-mutuel pools that produces payouts based on successful selection of finishers. The winner of each pool will be the bettor who correctly selects one or more positions of the exact order of finish in multiple races on the same play. The pools built from all players losing bets until someone picks correctly. The more accurate the selection in multiple races on the same play, the larger the payout for the bettor.

Players feel like they’re playing a video gaming machine, but technically, they’re betting on anonymized horse races that have already occurred (hence the term “historic”).

For each set of races, the selections obscure the names of the horses, trainers, jockeys, dates and locations,  but display visual easy-to-read handicapping information so players can select horses they believe will finish in the correct order, just as they would at the live races.

For those players that wish to speed up the game play, they can automate the selection of horses by using the post time odds order at the track at the time the race was actually run. This “Auto-Cap” (Automatic Handicapping) selects the favorite in the race to be first, next lowest odds horse selected second, etc., and is the default setting when a bettor hits the play button on a terminal.    

The last few seconds of the race are displayed on a small part of the video screen. The rest of the monitor displays reels and symbols to show the player the representation of what, if anything, they won off the races.