Time’s getting short to win a spot to the NHC. And time’s getting really short to win a $10,000 seat to the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge. We’ll help you in that race against time with NHC and BCBC qualifiers every day this weekend, plus three new entries in the weekend lineup to further help you in your NHC quest. It all gets started on Friday.
You can win lots of money at the NHC and BCBC, but they say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, so you can bag one of those birds in our Friday up-to-$12,500 Pick & Pray with $5,000 Guaranteed. It’s $190 to enter and the field is limited to 75 entries.
Just $75 gets you into Friday’s NHC Pick & Pray direct qualifier and two seats are guaranteed to be awarded. One per 143 entries will march on to Vegas but, again, at least two packages will be awarded no matter how many or few participate.
Friday, like Saturday and Sunday, also offers a BCBC qualifier over at HorsePlayers.
Here, it’s a Low Ratio Pick & Pray with one $10,000 entry guaranteed and a winning ratio of just one in 23. The entry fee is $500 in this Pick & Pray. And since all three Friday features are Pick & Prays, it makes for some potentially lucrative multi-tabling opportunities.
Contest races for the Friday multi-track slate are the 5th and 8th from Belmont; the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th from Santa Anita; and the 7th through 10th from Keeneland—10 races in all.
NHC spots, BCBC entries and cash again rule the day on Saturday.
The cash tourney—the richest of the weekend—is our up-to-$30,000 event with $17,500 guaranteed. The entry fee is $260 and a maximum of 133 entries will be accepted. This week, it’s a Pick & Pray.
Another Pick & Pray is Saturday’s entry-only qualifier to the 2019 Horse Player World Series. The entry fee is $90 and one in 20 will earn a $1,500 entry to one of the true “majors” on the contest calendar.
Of course, contests don’t get any more major than the National Horseplayers Championship (NHC). Saturday’s NHC offering is a $500 Low Ratio qualifier with one seat guaranteed and a winning ratio of one in 21. Note that this will be a live-format tourney.
Also to be run in live-format are all three Saturday qualifiers at HorsePlayers.
Two of the three are BCBC qualifiers. One is a “regular” qualifier with a fairly traditional winning ratio of one in 65 and a buy-in of $179. At least one $10,000 entry is guaranteed to be awarded.
The other is a high-end, $2,300 qualifier with a success-friendly winning ratio of one in five. Here, too, one grand prize is guaranteed so keep an eye on this one in case it comes up light on entries.
The other featured event at HorsePlayers on Saturday is a $118, live-format qualifier for the December 22 NTRA/Fair Grounds qualifier. One in 20 earns a $1,500 entry plus $500 for travel to New Orleans, and contestants at Fair Grounds will compete for cash plus one NHC seat per each 15 entries.
Contest races for all of the featured Saturday tourneys at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers are the 7th, 9th and 10th at Woodbine (where it’s Canadian International Day); the 3rd, 5th and 6th at Santa Anita; and the 8th through 10th races from both Belmont and Keeneland—a dozen races in total.
On Sunday, with 10 featured tourneys, we’ll be busier than NFL replay officials.
Of special note within the comprehensive array of tourneys are three new qualifiers.
One is for the November 10-11 (weekend after the Breeders’ Cup) Del Mar Fall Classic. This live-format game carries an entry fee of $293 and offers one $5,000 package ($4,500 entry plus $500 for travel) per each 20 entries.
Another is for the November 23-24 (weekend after Thanksgiving) Hawthorne Fall NHC Super Qualifier. This one is a Pick & Pray and winners (one per each 15 entries) will receive $800 in entry fees (good for both of the single-day tourneys) and $500 for travel.
Lone Star Park will offer an NHC qualifier of its own on December 1, and one in 10 in this Sunday Pick & Pray will receive a $500 entry. The buy-in for this qualifier is just $59.
Staying with the Sunday qualifiers, there’s a “regular” NHC tourney (live-format) with two seats guaranteed and a winning ratio of one in 65.
Also on tap is a $71 Pick & Pray to the December 29 Monmouth Last Chance NHC qualifier. Winners (one per each 15 entries) earn a $400 entry and $500 for travel.
There are also three nice cash games on the Sunday featured-tourney menu, including two with $10,000 guarantees.
One of those $10,000 Guaranteed events is our Big Bucks tourney, where a maximum of 20 entries play for a total purse of at least $10,000 and up to $20,000. The entry fee is $1,150 for this Pick & Pray, and prizes go strictly to the top three finishers (on a 70/20/10 basis). Low-cost feeders to the Big Bucks tourney are, of course, available all weekend long.
There’s also an up-to-$20,000 tourney on Sunday (Pick & Pray this week). This event carries an entry fee of $195, and a pot of at least $10,000 is assured. Total entries are limited to 118.
For exotics specialists, there is our up-to-$5,000 Exacta box tourney (always live-format) on Sunday. Here, players choose a three-horse exacta box in each race, and the winner is determined based on cumulative $1 exacta payoffs on the 12 contest races (with no payoff caps). This tourney will offer a guaranteed purse of at least $2,000.
HorsePlayers wraps up the weekend with a pair of featured events.
The BCBC qualifier is a live-format Low Ratio contest with an entry fee of $500 and at least one $10,000 entry guaranteed. The winning ratio is one in 23, and one seat is guaranteed to be awarded.
The other is for the NTRA/Santa Anita Super Qualifier on January 5. Similar to the December 22 event at Fair Grounds, this “Super Q” will offer one NHC seat per each 15 entries plus cash. In our Sunday, live-format qualifier, you can win a $1,500 entry to the January 5 tourney plus $500 for travel to The Great Race Place.
This weekend, we wish good luck—and also safe travels—to 80 of our sharpest players who will be competing at Sunday’s Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge and at the Orleans Fall Classic, which gets under way today and continues through Saturday. We have 28 players representing HorseTourneys at Keeneland and 53 HorseTourneys qualifiers at The Orleans. We won’t mention all of them by name—but we will wish good luck…and good organization…to “Mister” Lindsay Hurst, who racked up a whopping seven (!) Orleans Fall Classic entries at HorseTourneys.
Whether you’ll be logging on this weekend from Keeneland, the second-floor Mardi Gras room at The Orleans, or the comfort of your living room, we hope you have a fun and profitable weekend of tournament play.