With Christmas Eve falling on Sunday and Christmas Day on Monday, that means a compressed racing schedule. But not a subpar featured schedule at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers. Essentially, what we might have lost on Sunday, we are plowing into Friday and Saturday. The net result: 13 featured tourneys…and—in case your holiday shopping is complete—a nice assortment of Gulfstream-only tourneys on Sunday since Gulfstream is open for business that day.
We don’t normally schedule four featured events on a Friday. But we know a lot of you have the day off. So we have a trio of contests for your handicapping pleasure at HorseTourneys and another at HorsePlayers.
In fact, since so many of our customers are off from work on Friday, we’ve ratcheted up our Friday cash game this week to an up-to-$20,000 tourney with $10,000 Guaranteed. Note that this is a live-format event with an entry fee of $195, and entries are capped at 118. Contest races are races 6 through 10 at Gulfstream; races 7, 8 and 9 at Aqueduct; and the 8th and 10th from Tampa—10 races in all.
Those races will also comprise the challenge for that day’s Horse Player World Series entry-only qualifier (also live-format).
And there’s also a special Friday edition of our Treasure Island NHC Last Chance qualifier. This one is a Pick & Pray. It costs just $58 to play and one in 10 earns a $500 entry to the February 8 “day-before-the-NHC” competition up in horse-race heaven on the second floor. And it’s a contest well worth participating in even if you are already double qualified for the NHC. How’s that? It’s because the top three finishers among those already double-qualified will win a seat to the 2019 NHC. Contact Michele Ravencraft of the NTRA if you have any questions about the February 8 Last Chance tournament at Treasure Island.
Regular Friday players will likely be pleased to see that the day’s marquee event at HorsePlayers is the same as usual.
Yes, it’s another $75 NHC qualifier, with two seats guaranteed. Friday’s economical path to the NHC is again run as a Pick & Pray. So you can get your picks in for this game and focus on our $20,000 and HPWS live games at HorseTourneys if you wish.
With no featured tourneys on Sunday, we have to make Saturday count. And we think we will.
Our Saturday up-to-$30,000 cash game is a live-format affair this week and guaranteed at $20,000 no matter how many enter. (Entries are limited to 133.)
There’s also a Saturday full-package qualifier (live format) for the Horse Player World Series. It’s $117 to play and winners (one per each 25 entries) will earn a $1,500 entry to the three-event plus four nights at The Orleans and another $500 to put towards your transportation.
Imagine how merry your Christmas would be if you knew you’d be heading to the Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship the following month at Gulfstream? You can do just by winning a $12,500 package in our Saturday qualifier. It’s already guaranteed to “go” since we have 28 entries. So why not put your best Saturday handicapping thoughts to their potentially most lucrative use?
The NHC is quite lucrative too, and getting qualified to this on Saturday will leave you with visions of more than just sugarplums.
We’ll also have a Saturday up-to-$5,000 Exacta tourney with $2,000 guaranteed. This is a particularly good event for those of you who find picking just the winner of a race to be too easy.
Or it could be good if you find picking just the winner too hard…because with an exacta tourney, you have the luxury of choosing three horses per race. And if one of the three runs really poorly, it doesn’t matter.
There are also live-format qualifiers to end-of-the-year events at Surfside and Hawthorne. The weather figures to be better at Surfside. But Hawthorne’s money spends every bit as well as Surfside’s.
And, for the second consecutive day, we are offering a qualifier (live-format today) to the Treasure Island Last Chance game. A reminder—if you become double-qualified AFTER winning one of these qualifiers, you have the option of continuing on and playing for a 2019 seat (per the above) or exchanging the prize for HorseTourneys site credit…or transferring the Last Chance entry to a friend. The choice is yours. You just have to let us know with some time to spare ahead of the big week at Treasure Island.
HorsePlayers will play host on Saturday to a competition that is never our largest in terms of entries, but is certainly among our most spirited.
It’s our weekly NHC Super Qualifier—run this week as a Pick & Pray. You won’t find an NHC qualifier with a lower winning ratio (1 in just 21) than in this event.
And while Sunday will be quieter than usual, we won’t be dark at HorseTourneys. Gulfstream is running. And so we’ll be running too—with a host of special single-track Gulfstream-only tourneys that can liven up your day while you’re wrapping gifts or mixing the egg-nog.
One quick aside: For those of you whose tastes in tourneys runs more towards stocking stuffers than purchases from your local Lexus dealer, be aware that many of our Survivor tourneys now run at the low price of $5.00 per entry.
You may not get rich in these smaller tourneys. You may not impress your friends and neighbors. But by playing in them, you can still “experience amazing” (spoken with a British accent, of course). Because they’re a lot of fun.
All fun and kidding aside, we wish you good luck in your contest play this weekend. And every bit as much, we wish a wonderful holiday to you and the ones you love.