It’s Super Saturday weekend with all kinds of Breeders’ Cup preps (and quite historic races in their own right, including the Jockey Club Gold Cup) at Belmont and Santa Anita. To mark the special nature of Saturday, we’re stepping up the day’s big cash tourney and also putting forward another special qualifier. But first things first, and where this weekend is concerned, that means Friday.
Friday is a special day too because it is opening day at Santa Anita—and they’ve put together a very nice card for their lidlifter (an old favorite term of Associated Press sports editors used to describe the first game of a series). Our featured-tourney lidlifter for the weekend is our up-to-$12,500 Pick & Pray with $5,000 Guaranteed regardless of participation. It’s $190 to enter and the field is limited to 75 entries.
Contest races for the $5,000 Guaranteed/up-to-$12,500 tourney are the 7th through 9th from Gulfstream; the 8th and 9th from Belmont; and the 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th from Santa Anita—10 races in all.
Using the same 10 races, HorsePlayers is again offering a pair of Friday featured tourneys.
One is a Frequent Friday offering—a BCBC Low Ratio Pick & Pray with one $10,000 entry guaranteed. This entry fee here is $500, which gets you a winning ratio of just 1 in 23.
The other is an always-popular $75 NHC qualifier. This is also a Pick & Pray and two NHC berths are guaranteed in this low-fee tourney.
The Super Saturday feature, as mentioned earlier, is our $35,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray. It is one of four featured events on the day.
The big-money game carries an entry fee of $345 and offers a total pot of at least $35,000 no matter how many sign up. However, there is no limit as to how high the purse can grow. There is a limit of two entries per account, and keep in mind that you can win yourself a seat to this event for $40…or even as little as $19…via low-cost feeders on Thursday, Friday and early on Saturday.
Saturday is also our entry-only Orleans Fall Classic blowout. It’s a $74 Pick & Pray in which one in eight entries will earn a $500 entry to the October 11-13 mythical-money tournament at The Orleans in Las Vegas.
Speaking of Vegas, there are two more qualifiers on Saturday for top tourneys in the desert. One is a live-format, “regular” NHC qualifier with two seats guaranteed and an entry fee of $165.
The other is an entry-only to The Orleans’s signature event, the Horse Player World Series. One entry, per each 20 at $90 each, will earn a $1,500 HPWS entry in this Pick & Pray qualifier.
Over at HorsePlayers, the BCBC takes center stage on Saturday.
It’s a “regular,” live-format qualifier with a $179 entry fee and one $10,000 entry/prize guaranteed.
Contest races for all of the Saturday featured tourneys at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers are the 10th through 13th (all stakes) at Gulfstream, the 8th through 11th at Belmont; the 9th and 11th at Woodbine; and the 7th and 8th at Santa Anita—a dozen races in total, with seven of those being stakes.
Sunday is our highest-traffic day with eight featured tourneys, including five at HorseTourneys. One of those is a special, one-time-only qualifier.
The “now or never” opportunity is an “entries only” qualifier to the Santa Anita Doubleheader tournaments on October 6-7. The Doubleheader events are two separate, single-day tourneys—one on Saturday, one on Sunday—with a $3,000 entry fee on each day. HorseTourneys qualifiers to the event receive their entry fees for both days. The live-format qualifier this Sunday carries an entry fee of $280 and one in 25 will advance on to Santa Anita the following weekend.
There is also a trio of lucrative cash games on Sunday, led by our (fairly) new weekly Big Bucks tourney. In these contests, there is a limit of 20 entries competing for a total purse of between $15,000 (guaranteed) and $20,000. The entry fee is $1,150 for this Pick & Pray, and prizes go just to the top three finishers (on a 70/20/10 basis). As per usual, low-cost feeders to the Big Bucks tourney are available all weekend long.
There’s also Sunday’s up-to-$20,000 tourney which, like most of the weekend’s featured events, is a Pick & Pray this week. This event carries an entry fee of $195, and a pot of at least $10,000 is Guaranteed. Total entries are capped at 118.
For exacta specialists, there is our up-to-$5,000 Exacta box tourney (always live-format) on Sunday. Players select a three-horse exacta box in each race, and the winner is determined based on cumulative $1 exacta payoffs on the 12 contest races. A purse of at least $2,000 is guaranteed.
There is one more featured Sunday qualifier to note: a $162 Pick & Pray with a top prize of a $3,500 package ($3,000 entry fee and $500 for travel) to the October 14 Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge. One in 25 entries, at $162 each, will be Bluegrass bound.
HorseTourneys has three Sunday features, two offering seats to the BCBC, and one leading to the NHC.
The NHC qualifier is a “regular,” live-format tourney with two seats guaranteed and an entry fee of $165.
The two BCBC qualifiers are both high-end games. One carries a $1,150 entry fee (live format) and has a winning ratio of one in 10. The other has an entry fee of $2,300 (Pick & Pray) and offers a winning ratio of just one in five. One seat is guaranteed, regardless of participation, in each of the two BCBC qualifiers on Sunday.
While the eyes of many racing fans will be focused on Belmont Park for its Super Saturday card, the feet of 13 sharp HorseTourneys players will be planted on the ground there to compete in Saturday’s NTRA/Belmont Park NHC Super Qualifier. They are Thomas Labordo, Peter Osella, Vito Cipriano, Darren Yarwood, Tim Haas, George Bosch, Jeff Sandler, Steven Culhane, Jobby Blevins, Ryan Mueller, Basil DeVito, David Harrison and Joe Scanio.
We wish them—and you—good luck this weekend. May it be a “super” one for you and yours.