The short version
Back a camel that sits on top of its stack, choose Bold more often than feels comfortable, and spend your cheer on the camel you forecast. In a big group, treat leg 4 onward as if it might be the double-points leg.
The rest of this page shows why, with numbers. We ran the race rules from this game, the same code the server uses to move and rank camels, 200,000 times with random dice. They are averages over many races, so any single leg can still surprise you. That is half the fun.
The opening leg: tops of stacks lead
Every race starts with the six camels in three stacks of two, on spaces 0, 1 and 2. In the table, rank 1 is the camel in front (top of the stack on space 2) and rank 6 is the camel at the very back (bottom of the stack on space 0). The odds are for the end of the first leg, with no cheers.
| Start rank | Position | Finishes first | Finishes top two | Safe, average points | Bold, average points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | top of space 2 | 25% | 48% | 0.96 | 1.27 |
| 2 | bottom of space 2 | 12% | 32% | 0.64 | 0.60 |
| 3 | top of space 1 | 21% | 41% | 0.81 | 1.05 |
| 4 | bottom of space 1 | 10% | 22% | 0.44 | 0.48 |
| 5 | top of space 0 | 22% | 38% | 0.76 | 1.10 |
| 6 | bottom of space 0 | 10% | 20% | 0.40 | 0.49 |
The top camel of the last stack (rank 5) wins the leg almost as often as the top camel of the middle stack, and nearly twice as often as the bottom camel of the front stack. A camel on top gets a free ride whenever the camel underneath rolls, and it keeps its own die as well. The three bottom camels only move when their own die comes out.
Safe or Bold?
Bold pays 5 points for first place. Safe pays 2 points for first or second. So Bold earns more on average whenever the chance of first place is more than 40% of the chance of a top-two finish. In our test races that was true for nearly every camel in nearly every leg.
| Rank at leg start | Finishes first | Finishes top two | Safe, average points | Bold, average points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 40% | 65% | 1.30 | 1.99 |
| 2 | 22% | 53% | 1.07 | 1.10 |
| 3 | 16% | 35% | 0.69 | 0.79 |
| 4 | 11% | 24% | 0.48 | 0.57 |
| 5 | 7% | 15% | 0.31 | 0.37 |
| 6 | 4% | 8% | 0.15 | 0.19 |
Safe still has a job. On the leading camel it scores in about two legs out of three, while Bold scores in about two out of five. When you are ahead on points and want steady scoring, Safe on the leader is a fine choice. When you are behind, Bold is how you catch up, and the final leg pays 10 points for it.
The one spot where Safe came out ahead is the bottom camel of the front stack in the opening leg (rank 2): whenever it moves, the camel on its back rides along and stays in front, but it still tends to finish in the top two.
A one-space lead is shakier than it looks
Here is a result that surprised us. A leader sharing a space with the second camel, sitting on top of it, holds first place more often than a leader one space ahead.
| Leader’s lead over second | Still first |
|---|---|
| Same space, on top | 40% |
| 1 space | 27% |
| 2 spaces | 44% |
| 3 spaces | 62% |
| 4 spaces or more | 83% |
When the leader is one space ahead, any camel just behind it that rolls a 1 lands on the leader’s space and climbs on top, which puts it in front. Sitting on top of the second camel works the other way: when that camel moves, it carries the leader along.
Where to put your cheer
Each cheer vote adds one space to that camel’s own move this leg, up to two extra spaces. In the opening leg, two votes on the front camel lift its chance of finishing first from about 25% to 46%.
| Start rank | No cheers | +1 space | +2 spaces |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25% | 35% | 46% |
| 2 | 12% | 19% | 26% |
| 3 | 21% | 28% | 39% |
| 4 | 10% | 11% | 19% |
| 5 | 22% | 28% | 36% |
| 6 | 10% | 10% | 12% |
Cheers help most for camels near the front. A cheer on the bottom camel at the back barely changes its own odds: even two extra spaces rarely get it to the lead, and whenever it moves it carries the camel on its back, which stays ahead of it. It does help that rider: two votes on the rank 6 camel raise the chance that its rider (rank 5) wins the leg from 22% to about 30%. Cheering your own camel directly raises it to 36%, so that is usually the better vote.
Cheer totals are shown to everyone once all forecasts are locked, but forecasts stay hidden. A camel with two votes is a crowd favorite, and other players will know it.
When will the race end?
The race ends as soon as a camel reaches space 24, or after six legs. Points in that last leg double: 4 for a correct Safe forecast, 10 for a correct Bold one. More players means more cheers, and cheers push camels to the finish sooner.
| Players | Leg 4 or earlier | Leg 5 | Leg 6 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 10% | 45% | 45% |
| 4 | 19% | 54% | 28% |
| 6 | 35% | 54% | 11% |
| 8 | 46% | 49% | 5% |
With no cheers at all, 97% of races run the full six legs. With six or more players, more than a third of races are already over by leg 4, so a Bold forecast from leg 4 on can easily be worth 10 points.
A quick checklist for each forecast
- Find the camels on top of stacks near the front. They are your best candidates.
- Check the gaps. A lead of three or more spaces is solid; a one-space lead is not.
- Pick Bold unless you are ahead on points and the camel is a likely top-two finisher.
- Cheer for the camel you forecast. In our runs that beat cheering the camel underneath it.
- From leg 4 on, count the spaces to 24. If a camel could finish this leg, every point doubles.
Want to test these calls? Open a room for your friends, or add two computer riders and try a practice race. The details are in the complete rules.
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