Jockey Club

Jockey Club, released by Bally in April 1941, is a one-ball horserace payout machine from the golden age of gambling-style pin games. With its horse racing theme, it reflects the popularity of the track as entertainment in 1940s America, and like other one-ball payout games of the era, a single ball determined the player's fortunes rather than points scored across multiple balls.

Its signature feature was "Buy the Board": after 40 coins had been played without a winner, all seven selections were guaranteed, an enticement designed to keep players feeding the machine in hopes of a payout. This kind of odds-manipulation feature was characteristic of Bally's payout games of the period.

The game's dating has an interesting wrinkle. A Billboard advertisement dated April 26, 1941 indicated production was already in its first weeks, while handwritten transcriptions of official Bally documents show a date of February 26, 1941, which may represent a point prior to the start of production. Little is known about the machine's designer, but Jockey Club remains a notable piece of Bally's prewar payout-game history.