Dave and Buster’s is an interesting place, and believe it or not it got more interesting for me yesterday. Having been down in the dumps lately, my boy Adam invited me to accompany him and his family to Dave and Buster’s to play this game called Derby Owner’s Club. Or as I think of it, the game in the back of Dave and Buster’s that I always look at as I walk to the air hockey table.
*My air hockey skills are uncanny. I go into this machine-like zone where I cannot be beat. I am the closest thing to the actual “terminator” and I challenge anybody to play me.
Anyways, all week Adam would attempt to jazz me up for this life-changing experience that I was about to encounter. Throughout class there would be numerous instances where he would randomly belch how much fun the game is. He tried explaining it to me, but I wasn’t the getting picture, so he invited me to see for myself. Little did I know what I was in for.
Pre-Race
I arrive at Adam’s house around 11:30 a.m. As I walk in, I notice that he is holding a binder in his hand. I question what that could possibly be for. “It’s got all my horses, just watch you’ll see,” he tells me. My curiosity spiked up a few notches, wondering what I was about to be seeing in a little while. Adam also has on his lucky Pedro Alvarez jersey (his last name is Alvarez) and I ask him why he chose to wear that. He replies, “It’s all about intimidation.” Intimidation is indeed a key factor in Adam’s success apparently.
When we get to Dave and Buster’s around noon, I finally find out what this binder business is about. Adam shows me different types of papers such as: whip charts (a guide as to the precise times to whip the horses), names of the tracks (in the order that they appear in the game mind you) and the names and distances of each race. Not to mention the what-seemed-like 50 horses that he possesses. Yes… They do their homework.
*Each horse has its own card that you put into the game machine. It looks almost like an ordinary baseball or Pokemon card. Remember those things? On the top of the card sits the name of the horse and I hope Adam doesn’t mind that I give some examples of the names of his horses:
- Miss Swag
- We The Party
- Kiss Me Hard
- Lil E Tee (My favorite because of the spelling)
- Project X
- Miss Big O (my horse of course)
And believe me, there was much more.
Racing
Adam and his family employ this strategy where they switch off each race so that they are able to maximize their earnings and not kill each other’s horses. I respect this strategy because their overall goal is to have their horse reach the prestigious top of the leader board status. However, I believe it is much more fun to race against each other. I, a rookie, beat Adam twice by the way…. So much for the intimidation factor. Oopsies.
The actual playing of the game may seem foreign at first, but once you get the hang of it there isn’t much to it. You see, there are two buttons, a hold button, and a whip button. Adam and his brother Nick told me that the hold button is only for “professionals that go for the records,” so I didn’t even bother with that. Every race begins with a pretty strong adrenaline rush when you wait for the starting gates to be lifted. Once the gates are lifted you must mash on the whip button as if your life depended on it. Then for the next minute or so, you sit idle, watching your horse make its way around the track.
**This is a concept that I did not completely grasp at first. Why would I want to just sit and watch my horse? Wouldn’t that mean I would lose my lead? But what I found out was that once each horse gets to a certain point around the track, the trainer will preserve their whip in order to make their move on the home stretch. And as the day went on, I began to make many moves of my own.
There are many types of horses that I am not going to get into because that would just take too much time. Quite frankly, I’m surprised I have been able to babble on about a horse racing game for this long. Because I was always under the impression that horse racing games were not this interesting. Maybe this one isn’t either, but with Adam’s family it sure was. I couldn’t help but be amazed at how much they were into it. Both he and his brother wish they could trade their PS3 for this majestic game! It was astounding to me. Before we knew it, it was 5 p.m. and my eyes were fried. Who knew staring at a screen for 5 hours wasn’t good for you? News to me.
All in all we had quite the day, I didn’t even mention the fact that the manager at Dave and Buster’s gave us free food AND Arnold Palmer’s because Adam’s family are such regulars. Underneath all of the racing, trash talking (intimidation) and binders, I saw a family bonding and that was the coolest thing to me.
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