Entertaining but without long-term motivation

My kids (6 and 8) and I are avid games player. We no longer confine ourselves to children's games, but also quite a few games for families and adults in their repertoire (including the settlers, Hotel, Ubongo and a few others).

Camel Up (or should not rightly be called Camel Cup it?) We have given our son for Christmas and this quasi blindly rely on the seal of "Game of the Year 2014". After unpacking the children have freed the cards from the carton blank and I briefly read over the instructions. My assessment was first: "It does not even have one just in between". So it ended up only once a player does not matter. Now it was at the beginning of the Easter holidays ausgemottet and played a couple of times.

The framework is still easier than expected and my kids had no difficulty to internalize the rules. Already after the first round were no more questions. The dice by Pyramid is a nice idea, and for the children, the highlight of the game. Betting on stages and overall winners or losers overall is also quite easy to understand. The points counting is a currency called the. Realized "Egyptian Pounds".

But here is my opinion, the weakness of the game: it is kept too easy.

On the one hand a simple dice game that with colorful camels at the Children's "little snail pace" recalls. Beefed it is by the particular type of dicing (dice cup in the form of a pyramid) and the Stapelei the camels. Secondly, a betting game where you bet on the possible winner of a stage and an overall winner and losers.
Both lacking in my opinion the draft or the ability to influence. While there are, for example, the desert map where the camels need to make a step forward or backward when landing on selbiger, but that was about it. One can order a stage not decisively influence (tested several times). Here I think about action cards would have been a much greater depth of play and tactical component possible.
The bet in my opinion is to risk. Even if one is betting blind, you have the worst case per wrong bet a currency unit exits. The probability of thoughtless bets but many currency units is to gain much greater. My 6 year old son (just pulled haphazardly betting tickets or placed) 2 games with blind Wettwut won hands down. Accordingly great was the frustration of my daughter and me, we have tried tactically approach the thing.

Something out of place I find to the game money. Before we started playing, we have assumed that the money would be the wager. But this is not so, because the money only serves to count the game points.

Conclusion:
Highlighting positive can be that this is an entertaining game that can participate in up to 8 people. The rules are easy to understand and useful in my opinion, also for children under 8 years.
Negative I find the lack of depth of gameplay that has to offer to many a child or junior game. Bearing in mind that it is then declared as a family game from 8, I find this situation even quite disappointing. Therefore, I can not understand why this game was named "Game of the Year" as well. One can have no influence on the camel races, but is the luck of the dice and the bets depend lack the necessary risk to make it exciting.
My kids do not want to play anyway.