The notion that tournaments reward those who are great, not good, is already baked into contest play with top prizes reserved for those who finish only at or near the top. Many players take this fundamental concept to the next level by playing multiple tournaments in a single day. Three of them—Adam Thoutt, Anthony Trezza and Ken Seeman—profited handsomely from that practice this past weekend.
Richard Grose might have added his name to that opening paragraph had we scheduled more than one featured tourney on Friday.
As it was, Grose’s three wins—including Lolly Express ($33.80, $12.80) in the final contest race—and one place was good for a payday of $4,455 in Friday’s $7,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray, which ultimately had a final purse of $8,911.
On Saturday, the multi-tabling began in earnest. Anthony “Doczilla” Trezza is a player who has stated a preference for Pick & Prays over live-format play. So it made sense that the handicapping optometrist focused his play at HorsePlayers where a couple of featured Pick & Prays were being held.
Based in part on the strength of next-to-last contest-race selection Emboldened ($30.00, $11.00) in the 8th at Santa Anita, Trezza amassed a total of $105.60, good for a coveted $10,000 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge entry.
Trezza also played those same selections in Saturday’s NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers.
Trezza’s $105.60 didn’t finish first here, but it didn’t really matter because a) two NHC seats were being awarded and b) winner Jobby Blevins was already double –qualified…meaning he was playing strictly for NHC Tour Points. That meant that Trezza, along with third-place finisher Chris Williams got their Vegas tickets punched.
For Blevins, it was the third NHC qualifier he has won this year at HT/HP. In this most recent conquest, he recorded four wins and a place—and most of that damage was done in the first four races. In those, he had three wins and one place, good for $82.00 of his ultimate $107.20 total.
Back at HorseTourneys, the two most lucrative tourneys had different formats—but that didn’t stop Adam Thoutt, winner of a $50,000 game in April, from multi-tabling.
Thoutt picked runners up in each of the first five races, then added three winners after that to win an $8,500 package in our Del Mar Handicapping Challenge Pick & Pray. (Thoutt also won our April 28 Del Mar qualifier, so he’ll be coming in hot for that one.)
In Saturday’s live-format $20,000 Guaranteed event, Thoutt scored even better.
Here he had three wins and three places add up to a score of $109.60, which got him top money of $9,526 in the game that finished up with a final pot of $21,169. What a spring it has been for Adam!
One of the East’s more popular tournaments is coming up on June 2—the Monmouth Park Pick Your Prize tourney. Saturday’s qualifier for that produced a good turnout and three winners of $2,500 packages.
Congratulations to winners Mike Yurczyk, Pete Acocella and George Bosch. Perhaps they will want to bring a few extra bucks to Monmouth on June 2 to get some baseball bets in!
Speaking of Monmouth, Ken Seeman had a frustrating day there on Saturday. Competing in a pair of live, companion tournaments at Monmouth, he played great all day, worked his way up to about third-place in the standings, then lost it all in the last race.
“I bet $1,200 on a horse I didn’t even really like,” Seeman said solemnly, with a shrug of his shoulders, after the Monmouth event.
Seeman is great at “turning the page,” though, and he was back in the saddle (so to speak) on Sunday at HorseTourneys.
Five winners did the trick for Seeman in the live-format qualifier for the Saratoga Challenge(s) on August 10-11. He and runner up Ryan Tyreman will be trekking up the Northway for that one.
Seeman must have treated the Mother’s Day tourneys like Pick & Prays, though, because he used the exact same picks in Sunday’s $12,000 Guaranteed tourney.
Seeman’s score of $119.00 was no match for Brett Wiener. But it sufficed for second-place and the $3,002 that went with it. Perhaps that $1,200 Saturday mistake doesn’t seem as painful now.
Getting back to the $12,000 Guaranteed game, which finished with a purse of $15,014, there was simply no beating Brett Wiener on this day. The winner here of $6,756, Wiener had seven winners plus a place, and finished more than $37.00 ahead of Seeman and the rest. He nailed the last three races and six of the last eight. Here’s how his scoresheet looked:
Another brilliant performance was turned in by Edward Wright in Sunday’s $2,000 Guaranteed Exacta tourney.
Wright had six winners in all to lay claim to the $1,000 winner’s share. Four of those six three-horse-exacta-box winners came in the first four races, including a $111.25-for-a-buck score in the 5th at Belmont.
At HorsePlayers on Sunday, there were no multi-table winners per se, but there was a double-winner of sorts in the day’s BCBC Low Ratio tourney.
Stephen McNatton registered six wins—including four in a row during mid-tourney—plus two runner-up finishers to win the $10,000 BCBC entry. The game drew enough entries, however, that we were also able to award a partial $5,000 BCBC to runner up Thomas Michael Abinanti, who finished just $5.20 behind McNatton.
There was just one winner in Sunday’s NHC Super Qualifier.
William Smith (three wins, three places) scored just $71.30, but pretty is as pretty does, and that score was best of 18 to earn Smith the NHC berth.
Whether you won once, twice or not at all, we hope you had fun, and we thank you for playing. Remember…this Saturday is our Preakness Day Up-to-$150,000 Tourney. We hope you can join us for that.