Christmas falls on a Monday this year. Which means that Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday. And we’re not operating any contests on Christmas Eve (or Day). So for committed weekend warriors, this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday represents a nice chance to get a full, three-day weekend of competitions in ahead of Santa’s visit down your chimney.
Our popular up-to-$10,000 Pick & Pray–with $6,000 Guaranteed—gets the weekend ball rolling on Friday. The entry fee is $190, and entries are capped at 60. Contest races are the 6th through 8th from Laurel; the 6th through 10th from Gulfstream; and the 6th and 8th at Aqueduct—10 races in all.
Those races will also comprise the challenge for that day’s Horse Player World Series entry-only qualifier. The $87 Pick & Pray is one of three HPWS tourneys offered over the course of the three days.
As many entries as those two events will attract, the most-attended competition of the day figures to be over at HorsePlayers.
Our $75 NHC qualifier, with two seats guaranteed, is never easy to win. But it’s hard to beat qualifying for the NHC for such a small outlay. This game, too, is a Pick & Pray.
If you don’t succeed for $75, you could try to get your ticket punched on Saturday at HorsePlayers for $165.
Once again, the format is Pick & Pray and once again, two spots are guaranteed to be awarded.
There’s a couple of very nice games being hosted at HorseTourneys that day as well:
Our Saturday up-to-$30,000 cash game is a Pick & Pray this week and guaranteed at $20,000 no matter how many enter. (Entries are limited to 133.)
There’s also a Saturday Pick & Pray qualifier for the Horse Player World Series. It costs a little more to enter compared to our entry-only HPWS tourneys–$117. But winners (one per each 25 entries) will earn not just a $1,500 entry to the three-day handicapping-fest, but four nights at The Orleans and another $500 to put towards your transportation costs.
All those Pick & Pray games on Friday and Saturday should come in handy in case you have any holiday shopping to do. And if that’s the case, try to get it taken care of on Friday or Saturday…because we’ve got eight featured tourneys coming at you on Sunday.
The schedule is headlined by an up-to-$20,000 Pick & Pray for $195 with $12,000 Guaranteed.
On the qualifying front, there’s a new entry to the HorseTourneys contest menu–it’s our first qualifier to the 2018 NHC Last Chance tournament on February 8 (NHC eve) at Treasure Island. It costs just $58 to play this Sunday, and one entry in 10 will win his or her $500 entry to the NHC Last Chance event.
There are also Pick & Pray qualifiers scheduled for the HPWS (entry fee: $87), Surfside ($92) and the Hawthorne Holiday Extravaganza ($63).
But if you prefer live-format tourneys, we have a couple of those as well. One is a “regular” NHC qualifier for $165 with two seats guaranteed. And the other is our up-to-$5,000 Exacta tourney with $2,000 Guaranteed. (Our Exacta tourneys are always live-format…they just seem to run better than way what with three horses per race being selected instead of just one.)
There’s one more featured weekend tourney on tap, and it’s over at HorsePlayers.
We’re back to Pick & Pray format for Sunday’s NHC Super Qualifier. You won’t find an NHC qualifier with a lower winning ratio (1 in 21) than in this event.
So while next weekend will be somewhat abbreviated from a contest standpoint, there’s nothing abbreviated about this weekend. Choose your tourneys—and even more so, your horses—wisely. It could mean an extra present or two under your tree. Good luck!