How to use the horse race name picker
The basics take ten seconds: paste names, press Start, read the finishing order. The guides below cover the situations people actually use it for, with the settings that work best in each one.
1. Classroom: picking who goes next
- Paste your class list once, one name per line (up to 50). The list is saved in the browser on that device, so tomorrow it is already there.
- Set Race length to Short. An eight-second race keeps the lesson moving; a long one turns into a distraction.
- Leave Winners to pick at 1 and press Start race.
- After the pick, use Remove winners & race again so the same student is not chosen twice in one lesson. When you have gone round everyone, paste the full list again.
Projector tip: press the Fullscreen (projector) button on the track before the lesson. Only the track is shown, and lanes and names scale to the full height of the screen so they can be read from the back of the room.
2. Raffle or giveaway with several prizes
- Paste every entrant. If someone bought three tickets, enter their name three times — duplicates are allowed and each line is its own horse.
- Set Winners to pick to the number of prizes. For first, second and third prize, enter 3.
- Choose Long race length. A 25-second race with lead changes is the point of doing this on stage.
- Press Shuffle lane order in front of the audience, then Start race.
- When the race ends, press Copy results. You get the full finishing order with a timestamp to keep as a record.
Prizes are awarded in finishing order: first past the post gets first prize. If a winner is not present, the next horse in the order is the natural fallback.
3. Office sweepstake: who picks their horse first
For a Derby Day, Grand National or Melbourne Cup sweep, the fair way is to let the race decide the order in which colleagues choose their real horse (or to allocate runners at random).
- Paste the names of everyone in the sweep.
- Set Winners to pick to the total number of people, so the whole finishing order is highlighted.
- Run the race. Position 1 chooses their runner first, position 2 next, and so on. Copy the results and paste them into the office chat.
This tool only produces a random order. It does not handle money, odds or bets.
4. Livestream giveaways
- Paste the entrants (chat usernames work fine).
- Keep the browser window at a size where the whole track is visible in your stream capture. Medium race length suits a stream; it is long enough for chat to react.
- Sound effects are synthesised in the browser, so they are safe to include in the stream — nothing is copyrighted.
Settings explained
Race length
Short ≈ 8 seconds, Medium ≈ 14, Long ≈ 25. Length changes how fast the horses move, not the odds; every length is equally fair.
Winners to pick
How many horses at the top of the finishing order are marked as winners. It only affects the highlighting and the summary line; the full order is always shown.
Shuffle lane order
Randomly reorders the list. Lanes do not influence the result, but shuffling before a draw is good theatre and reassures an audience.
Remove winners & race again
Deletes the winner(s) of the last race from the list and immediately starts the next race with everyone else. Use it for multiple draws without repeats.
Keyboard and accessibility
Everything works with a keyboard: Tab to the Start button and press Enter. The finishing order is also written as plain text below the track, so screen readers and copy-paste both work.