Regarding how these races will operate, I have developed a Horse Racing Simulator in Excel, using Macros and mathematical formulas. I have programmed in over 4,000 horses with completely random stats that were assigned by a lottery generator, and a random horse naming generator. I have attached a few screen shots to detail how this works. The first will be the pre-race.

https://imgur.com/KrJhluj

On this screen, we see the general layout of the race, with 9 players. In this race, the 10 horses are as follows with odds, the closer to 0 the better that horse’s chance of winning;

Saturn (39), Rockin’ Robin (38), LordYork (10), PerfectDream (6), Pongo (4), Top Prize (4), Kossaka (15), Rhambles (4), Ambara (4), and Lady’s Man (4)

Given these odds, it is a safe assumption that Pongo, Top Prize, Rhambles, Ambara, and Lady’s Man are the favorites for this race. Each player placed a bet on each horse, apart from Lady’s Man, making him the “House” horse. From here, the race is set to begin. You can see the time stamp on screen is 8:48AM. Next, we will look at post-race.

https://imgur.com/qSeHUb9

After selecting “Race” in the sheet, the formulas work themselves out, and everything is then populated. As you can see, the horses are now on the far right of the screen in the “L” column. In columns O-R, you can see the plain text results of the race, with which player bet beside. In the table below, you can see the position, and the time for each horse. In this simulation, Top Prize took top prize (heh) followed by Rhambles, Lady’s Man, Pongo, Ambara, Rockin’ Robin, Kossaka, Perfect Dream, Saturn, then LordYork.

Given these results, it loads up well with what the opening odds were at the beginning of the race. Note the time stamp is 8:49AM. With this, there is no way the race can be tampered with in any way. For each race, we will post a screen shot of the before race, with odds, and the post-race with results. These will be timestamped, for your assurance.

Now, the important part, money. Given the results of this sample race, with each player betting 1 million, Top Prize would have taken home 7 million, Rhambles 1 million, and Lady’s Man (House) taking home 500k. This includes a 10% rake for each bet to cover the costs of running the race.

If you have any questions regarding how races are running, feel free to ask and I will answer them to the best of my ability.

Hello. First of all, impressive spreadsheet ! 

I do have one question though : if I have understood your rules correctly , the odds are not linked to the amount won after the race. That's only dependant on the position of my horse : 1st (big prize), 2nd (my bet back minus costs), 3rd (roughly half of it) or 4th+ (nothing).

So if I bet on a horse with a very bad odd (e.g.: 49) and finish first, I will win the same amount of money than if I bet on a horse with a very good odd of (e.g.: 4). So why would anyone bet on a horse with very bad odds ? Is there something I missed ? 

Thanks mate!

At the moment, the odds are not linked to amount won. This is due, initially, to stacking the odds against the house. 

Assuming things go smoothly, or even now if that would be preferable, we could do betting based instead. 

One of my ancestors did something similar a while back, using Excel. I sincerely hoipe your business is more successful than his was.

https://mafiareturns.com/comm/thread/116355#15563614

So only nine people can bet on the race?  You can't have more than one person per horse or do they split the winnings?

At the moment it's one person per horse, however I'm looking into different ways to do it that would open up more bets per horse.