By Cornelius Lysaght BBC racing correspondent

KING GEORGE BETTING 4-7 Kauto Star 9-2 Monet's Garden 11-2 Racing Demon 12-1 Exotic Dancer 14-1 Bar (Odds: William Hill 26 Dec)

To win the game Racing Demon, a player needs to be devilishly quick and fiendishly wily to dispose of their pack of playing cards at the earliest possible opportunity.

To beat odds-on favourite Kauto Star in the Stan James King George VI Chase at Kempton on Boxing Day, the up-and-coming steeplechaser Racing Demon - and the rest of the field - will require perhaps even greater adeptness.

For many, Kauto Star (pronounced 'Kayto', 'Kowto' or 'Koyto' depending on your point of view) is a Christmas cracker to compare with the late Desert Orchid.

Some indeed believe that the Paul Nicholls-trained horse, recently versatile enough to win races over three miles and then two, is sufficiently adaptable to be titled the new Dessie. And that despite his bay colouring.

Others are hoping otherwise.

Few horses have been embraced by the public in the same manner that Desert Orchid was - his death achieved an obituary in The Times newspaper. But one that came as close as any was three-time Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Best Mate.

And on the afternoon that 'Matey' - the best receive the sort of nicknames of which footballers would be proud - died at Exeter, his trainer Henrietta Knight won the following race with Racing Demon.

Kauto Star is obviously very, very good - but Racing Demon must have a good chance Racing Demon's trainer Henrietta Knight

That afternoon, they called him the new Best Mate, and those closest to the horse believe that he can live up to the billing by winning the King George just as his illustrious stablemate did in 2002.

Speaking in the build-up to Kempton, Knight insisted her runner, the third favourite, had a "good" chance of lowering Kauto Star's colours.

"As [eight-time champion trainer] Fred Winter used to say, you should never be frightened of one horse," she said.

"Kauto Star is obviously very, very good as we saw at Haydock and Sandown, but in the form he is in, Racing Demon must have a good chance.

"He won the Peterborough Chase at Huntingdon in very pleasing style, I thought, and he seems to thrive on racing on right-handed courses like Kempton."

Racing Demon lies third favourite in the betting behind Kauto Star, of course, and the northern challenger Monet's Garden.

He was runner-up in the Arkle Chase at the Cheltenham Festival in March, which is the path Kicking King took two years ago before going on to win the King George and Gold Cup.

Intriguingly another grey horse, Monet's Garden, is trained in Cumbria by Nicky Richards whose late father Gordon saddled One Man - also grey - to win twice in the 1990s.

Can Monet's Garden emulate the great grey Desert Orchid?

Richards is notoriously modest about the abilities of himself and of his horses, and even when I cornered him in a bar at Musselburgh races the other day, he gave little away.

"He's in good form, and I was delighted with his win at Carlisle," he said, his accent so similar to the Somerset burr of his late and much-lamented father, though Richards jnr is northern born and bred.

I detected however an unspoken undercurrent of bullishness about the mission ahead, when jockey Tony Dobbin will be in the saddle.

Come Boxing Day, Kauto Star will be all the rage for obvious reasons, but either Monet's Garden or Racing Demon could be the jokers in his pack.