With entries at the recent Orleans Fall Classic up over 50% compared to 2017 levels (331 vs. 220), we anticipate another uptick in interest for next March’s Horse Player World Series. What’s better than winning a $1,500 HPWS entry on HorseTourneys? Winning a package to the HPWS that includes a four-night hotel stay plus $500 for travel. You can do that every week at HorseTourneys starting this Saturday. And you can still play entry-only HPWS qualifiers on Sundays. Those are but two of 21 featured tourneys this weekend.
Three of the 21 weekend featured tourneys take place on Friday.
A Friday favorite is our up-to-$12,500 Pick & Pray with $5,000 Guaranteed. It’s $190 to enter and the field is limited to 75 entries.
If qualifying for the NHC is still an unaccomplished goal for you in 2018, then you can take a shot at a seat in Vegas for just $75 in Friday’s NHC Pick & Pray direct qualifier. Two seats are guaranteed to be awarded (the first two of six guaranteed seats on offer this weekend). One per 143 entries will be Vegas bound, but no fewer than two seats will be handed out.
Over at HorsePlayers, Friday marks the first of four BCBC taking place during the weekend.
Friday’s BCBC offering is 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 tourney. And since all three Friday features are Pick & Prays, it again makes for some potentially lucrative multi-tabling opportunities. Last Friday, Darryl Lacy won both the $5,000 guaranteed cash game and the BCBC Low Ratio tourney (and he finished third, just one spot outside the prizes, in the $75 NHC qualifier).
Contest races for the Friday featured events are the 6th, 7th and 9th from Keeneland; the 6th and 8th from Gulfstream Park West; the 8th through 10th from Laurel; and the 6th and 9th from Belmont—10 races in all.
Seven more featured tourneys are set for Saturday, including the aforementioned Horse Player World Series full-package qualifier, plus one other new entry in the HorseTourneys lineup.
The other new shooter is our first qualifier to the November 17 Aqueduct Challenge where players will compete for cash, NHC seats and a Belmont Stakes Betting Challenge seat. The entry fee for Saturday’s qualifier is $117 and one in 15 will earn a $1,000 entry fee and $500 for travel (a very good deal if you live close enough to just take the A train to Aqueduct).
Saturday is the day of our richest cash tourney of the weekend—our up-to-$30,000 event with $17,500 guaranteed. It’s a live-format game this week with an entry fee of $260 and a maximum of 133 entries.
For NHC aspirants, there’s a “Lower Ratio” Pick & Pray with an entry fee of $240 and a one in 45 winning ratio. Two grand prizes are guaranteed regardless of participation.
Also on the Saturday HorseTourneys menu 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.
There is a pair of live-format BCBC qualifiers at HorsePlayers on Saturday.
Here, it is a matter of “Choose your price points.” Or, if you want to be ultra aggressive, choose ‘em both.
You can buy-in for $1,000 and get yourself a one in 11 winning ratio…or you can dial-down the entry fee to $179 and play in a one-winner-per-65-entries tourney. In both tourneys, one prize is guaranteed to be awarded. Perhaps, with there being two BCBC qualifiers on one day, an overlay opportunity will materialize in one qualifier or the other…
Contest races for all of the featured Saturday tourneys at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers are the 7th through 10th at Belmont (where it’s New York Showcase Day); the 6th, 8th and 9th from Keeneland; the 8th, 9th and 11th from Laurel (where it’s Maryland Million Day); and the 11th and 12th at Woodbine—a dozen races in total.
On Sunday, we pull out all the stops with 11 featured tourneys.
The final two of the six guaranteed NHC spots this weekend will be awarded in a “regular” NHC Pick & Pray. $165 gets you into this one.
There’s also a live-format, $293 qualifier to the November 10-11 (weekend after the Breeders’ Cup) Del Mar Fall Classic. This event offers one $5,000 package ($4,500 entry plus $500 for travel) per each 20 entries.
The November 23-24 Hawthorne Fall NHC Super Qualifier costs $400 to play each day out in Chicago, and our Sunday Pick & Pray for this awards $800 in entry fees (good for both of the single-day tourneys) plus another $500 for your travel.
Another NHC qualifier takes place at Lone Star Park on December 1, and one in 10 in this Sunday live-format tourney will receive a $500 entry to it. The buy-in for this qualifier is just $59.
Those in the East may prefer our $71 live-format play-in competition to the December 29 Monmouth Last Chance NHC qualifier. Winners (one per each 15 entries) earn a $400 entry and $500 for travel. And for those who do live in the East, the traffic to the Jersey Shore should be far less daunting at that time of the year!
As noted earlier, there’s also a Sunday, entry-only qualifier to the Horse Player World Series. One per 20 entries in this live-format contest, at $90 per entry, will have a spot in the always-lucrative HPWS.
Also on the Sunday schedule, though we didn’t have enough room for it on our screenshot above, is a qualifier for the January 5 NTRA/Santa Anita Super Qualifier. The buy-in for this one is $118 and winners receive a $1,500 entry plus $500 for travel.
There are also three nice cash games on the Sunday featured-tourney menu—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 only to the top three finishers (on a 70/20/10 basis). Low-cost feeders to the Big Bucks tourney, of course, are offered all weekend long.
There’s also an up-to-$20,000 tourney on Sunday. This is also a $10,000-guaranteed event, but you can buy into this one for just $195. Total entries are limited to 118.
If one horse per race isn’t enough action for you, there is our up-to-$5,000 Exacta box tourney (always live-format) on Sunday. In Exacta tourneys, 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 closes things out this weekend with, you guessed it, a BCBC qualifier.
It’s a live-format Low Ratio contest with an entry fee of $500 and at least one $10,000 BCBC entry guaranteed to be given away. The winning ratio is one in 23. Remember that the Breeders’ Cup (and, therefore, the BCBC) takes place on Friday and Saturday, November 2-3, so the time to win you’re way in is drawing short.
In case you missed the results from last weekend, we want to congratulate one more time Duke Matties and Tommy Massis, who won the Orleans Fall Classic and Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge, respectively. We sent more than 80 people to those two events as HorseTourneys qualifiers, and we hope we will be sending you someplace fun—or putting some money in your pocket—as a result of this weekend’s tourneys. Good luck!