One of the biggest days on the mid-summer racing schedule comes up on Saturday as the Whitney Stakes and West Virginia Derby cards provide a veritable smorgasbord of stakes. Our Saturday featured schedule, therefore, offers nothing but stakes races on the 12-race syllabus. Solve these races and you could win big money in our special $40,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray (with no limit as to how high the purse can grow) or a $3,500 package to the Spa in our Last Chance Saratoga qualifier.
At HorseTourneys, our “weekends” always begin on Friday, with the marquee event being an up-to-$12,500 Pick & Pray.
Regardless of how many play, the Friday feature offers a guaranteed purse of at least $5,000. Contest races are the 6th and 8th from Monmouth; the 6th and 9th from Woodbine; the 6th, 8th, 9th and 10th from Saratoga; and the 5th and 9th from Gulfstream—10 races in all.
We had to hopscotch around the country a bit to bring you the very best races for Friday. Perhaps that is because the top races have been backloaded somewhat into Saturday. In any event, the Saturday racing is strong, and we think we have a schedule that does it justice.
The “special” on the Saturday menu is the aforementioned $40,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray. It’s $280 to play (though you can get in for $65 via our Friday Round 2 feeder), with a limit of two entries per account. There is no limit as to how many overall entries we will accept. As with all of our no-limit tourneys, “the more that play, the more we pay.”
Our Saturday “co-feature” is our last-chance qualifier for the Saratoga Challenges on August 10-11. The Saratoga Challenges are run as two separate, single-day tourneys next Friday and Saturday. Win Saturday’s last-chance qualifier and you’ll receive $3,000 in entry fees ($1,000 for Friday, $2,000 for Saturday) plus $500 for travel. One winning entry per each 25—at $164 each—will compete next weekend at the Graveyard of Champions.
There’s also an NHC “Lower Ratio” qualifier on Saturday with one in 45 punching his or her ticket to Las Vegas. This Pick & Pray costs $240 to play and two NHC spots are guaranteed. Note that this is a live-format tourney, unlike the $40,000 and Saratoga competitions, which are Pick & Prays.
Another of our most popular qualifiers these days are those for the Orleans Fall Classic. Maybe it’s the Alligator Bar, maybe it’s the onsite bowling center, but people seem to love any excuse to head to The Orleans. The October 11-13 Fall Classic offers a mythical-money competition for cash and Horse Player World Series seats. This qualifier is a Pick & Pray and it’s just $79 to play. Winners receive $500 for travel in addition to their $500 entry fee.
There are 12 contest races for the Saturday featured events and, again, they are all Stakes: the 7th and 8th from Monmouth; the 5th through 8th at Mountaineer (concluded by the West Virginia Derby); the 8th through 11th at Saratoga (including the Whitney); and the 12th and 13th from Gulfstream. None of those stakes, before scratches, have fewer than eight betting interests, so your winners should be duly rewarded.
Using the same races, HorsePlayers will offer a BCBC qualifier Saturday.
Here one grand prize of a $10,000 entry is guaranteed. The entry fee is $179 and one prize will be awarded per each 65 entries in this live-format tilt.
On Sunday, we have a robust selection of nine featured tourneys, including one brand new offering.
The “new shooter” is an entry-only qualifier for the Laurel Champions tournament on August 18, when two NHC seats and one all-inclusive seat to The BIG One will be up for grabs. Entries for this qualifier cost just $35 and one in 10 will win at $300 entry to Laurel.
The Pegasus World Cup makes another cameo appearance at HorseTourneys on Sunday. Winners in this live-format, $480 buy-in tourney (one per 30) win a fat $12,500 package to the Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship on January 25-26, 2019.
Another high-end qualifier is that for The BIG One, and time is running out to qualify for it online. Just 14 spots remain. Two of those 14 packages will definitely be awarded in Sunday’s tourney. Winners will advance to Laurel and compete for 10 NHC seats, 10 BCBC entries and 10 Horse Player World Series entries in a field that will not exceed 57 (counting two onsite winners from Laurel, including one in the above-referenced Champions contest, plus up to five buy-in entries). Cash prizes will be in play as well. As most of you probably know, all packages to The BIG One are all-inclusive. Travel, hotel, welcome dinner, transfers to and from the track and full buffets and open bar at the track are all included.
There’s also plenty of cash in play at HorseTourneys this Sunday…led by our up-to-$20,000 tourney with $10,000 guaranteed regardless of how many ultimately sign up. The entry fee is $195 with a maximum of 118 entries accepted in the contest.
If picking just one horse is cutting things to close for you, there’s our up-to-$5,000 (with $2,000 Guaranteed) Exacta tourney. It’s $125 to play, and contestants must select a three-horse exacta box in each tourney race. The winner is based on total overall return on a $1 play. And no payoff caps are imposed in this always-live-format contest.
Keeneland is also on the Sunday docket with a Pick & Pray qualifier to the October 14 Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge. One in 25 entries will earn a $3,500 package to the bluegrass-land tournament at one of America’s most beautiful and loved racetracks.
Coming up in just three weeks is the August 25 Monmouth Super Qualifier with seven NHC and two BCBC spots up for grabs. You can win a seat to the Jersey Shore competition Sunday for $80. One in 15 entries will earn a $500 entry plus $500 for travel to Joisey.
We mentioned earlier that the Orleans Fall Classic qualifiers have been popular. So we added an Orleans entry-only game to the Sunday schedule. This live-format tourney costs just $59 to enter and one in 10 will earn a $500 entry to the Fall Classic.
HorsePlayers rounds out our featured Sunday action with a pair of important events.
One is a live-format, “regular” qualifier for the NHC with an entry fee of $165 entry fee and two spots guaranteed.
The other is a BCBC Low Ratio qualifier in which you pay $500 to play, but the winning ratio is just one-in-23 for the coveted $10,000 BCBC entry. One prize is guaranteed in this live-format affair.
We wish you luck in the $40,000 Guaranteed tourney and hope you are able to Pick & Pray & Profit. And if you play one of our qualifiers, we hope you can emulate Dennis Montoro. He qualified for the Del Mar Handicapping Challenge for $400 here, and parlayed that into a Del Mar victory last weekend worth $117,000 plus seats to the NHC and BCBC. Amazingly, it was the first live, brick-and-mortar tournament he had ever played in.
We’re delighted for Dennis—and we’re sincerely appreciative of all our players. Thanks for all you do to make HorseTourneys what it is.