If you’re still hoping to win your way in to the November 2-3 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge, you’ll have ample opportunity—at a variety of price points—this weekend at HorsePlayers. There will be five separate BCBC qualifiers, each guaranteeing at least one $10,000 entry—and those are just five of 22 featured tourneys during Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The first of the five BCBC qualifiers takes place at HorsePlayers. It’s a Low Ratio Pick & Pray with one $10,000 entry guaranteed and a winning ratio of one in 23. The entry fee is $500 in this tourney.
Two extremely popular Friday tourneys are also on the day’s slate at HorseTourneys.
One is our up-to-$12,500 Pick & Pray with $5,000 Guaranteed. The buy-in is $190 and there is a limit of 75 entries.
You can qualify for the NHC at the BCBC…but if you want to eliminate a step, then you can take a direct shot at the NHC for just $75 on Friday. Two seats are guaranteed to be awarded (the first two of five guaranteed NHC spots up for grabs this weekend). One per 143 entries will be headed to Treasure Island, and if we get up to the 429-entry mark, a third seat will be added.
Contest races for the Friday featured events are the 6th through 9th from Keeneland; the 6th through 9th from Belmont; and the 8th and 10th from Laurel;—10 races in all.
Seven more featured tourneys are set for Saturday, including not one, not two, but three BCBC qualifiers at HorsePlayers. You can play all three or you can choose the event that best fits your budget.
You can win a $10,000 BCBC entry for $179 in our “regular” Pick & Pray. One seat is guaranteed and the winning ratio is 1 in 65.
Want to increase your odds of success? You can try your luck in our $1,000 BCBC Pick & Pray. One $10,000 prize/entry is guaranteed here as well, and the winning ratio here is just 1 in 11.
Still too chancy for your liking? You can improve your odds further in our Elite BCBC qualifier. Here, the buy-in is $2,300. It, too, is a Pick & Pray with one entry guaranteed, and the winning ratio here is a relatively tiny 1 in 5.
There are four very good events at HorseTourneys as well on Saturday.
Saturday is the day of our richest cash tourney of the weekend—our up-to-$30,000 Pick & Pray with $17,500 guaranteed. The entry fee is $260 and no more than 133 entries will be accepted.
There’s also an NHC Low Ratio qualifier with one seat guaranteed. The buy-in here is $500 and one in 21 will punch his or her ticket to Las Vegas.
You can also punch your ticket to another storied Las Vegas event in our full-package qualifier to next March’s Horse Player World Series. Winners, one per each 25 entries at $117 each, receive a $1,500 entry, a four-night hotel stay at the contest site, The Orleans, and another $500 for your travel expenses.
If the glitz of Las Vegas isn’t necessarily your scene (or even if it is), may we suggest…Aqueduct? You can qualify on Saturday 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 $78 and one in 15 will earn a $500 entry plus $500 for travel.
Contest races for all of the featured Saturday tourneys at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers are the 7th through 9th at Laurel; the 6th through 8th races at Woodbine; the 6th, 8th and 9th from Keeneland (where it’s closing day of their Fall meet); and the 6th through 8th at The Great Race Place (Santa Anita)—12 races in all.
On Sunday, we’ll open the floodgates with 12 featured tourneys, including the final BCBC qualifier of the weekend at HorsePlayers.
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. Win this and you’ll have a $7,500 bankroll with which to fire away into those 14 full Breeders’ Cup fields that were pre-entered earlier this week.
Meanwhile, there are qualifiers and cash games aplenty at HorseTourneys on Sunday…11 of them to be exact.
The final two of the five guaranteed NHC spots this weekend will be awarded in a “regular” NHC live-format qualifier. The entry fee here is $165.
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 takes place on the weekend after Thanksgiving. The event is run as two separate, single-day tourneys, each one with a $400 buy-in. Our Sunday Pick & Pray for this event awards $800 in entry fees (good for both days) plus another $500 for your travel.
The weekend after Hawthorne brings the Lone Star Park NHC qualifier (December 1), and one in 10 in this Sunday Pick & Pray will receive a $500 entry to it. The buy-in here is just $59.
One of the final brick-and-mortar NHC qualifiers of the calendar year is the December 29 Monmouth Last Chance NHC qualifier. Winners in our Sunday qualifier for it (one per each 15 entries at $71 per entry) earn a $400 entry and $500 for travel.
If you prefer warmer-weather venues, there’s the Sunday entry-only Pick & Pray to the Horse Player World Series at The Orleans in Las Vegas next March. (Of course, you’ll probably be indoors for all three days of the event, so weather really won’t matter that much.) One per 20 entries in this qualifier, at $90 per entry, will have a spot in one of the true “majors” on any year’s contest calendar.
Also on the Sunday schedule is a brand-new qualifier—a play-in Pick & Pray leading to the Gulfstream Park Conquer the Crown tournament on December 1. The “Crown” that you’d be attempting to conquer here is the Claiming Crown—an event that annually brings together a high number of large, evenly-matched, eminently bettable fields of the best, toughest claiming horses in the land. Winners of this entry-only game get their $3,000 buy-in covered on December 1.
Of a more pressing nature is our qualifier for the Santa Anita Closing Day tournament to be held on Sunday, November 4, the day after the Breeders’ Cup. This live-format tourney costs $176 to enter and one in 20 will earn a $3,000 entry to Santa Anita (where you’ll have an extra hour to handicap since the clocks go back the night before!).
There are also three important cash tourneys on the Sunday featured-event 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 as much as $20,000. The entry fee is $1,150 for this one, which is always run in Pick & Pray mode. Prize money is paid just to the top three finishers (on a 70/20/10 split).
There’s also an up-to-$20,000 Sunday Pick & Pray with an entry fee of $195. This is also a $10,000-guaranteed event…just with more players. Total entries are limited to 118.
And it wouldn’t be Sunday if we didn’t offer an up-to-$5,000 Exacta box tourney (always live-format). In these competitions, players pick a three-horse exacta box in each race, and the winner is based on cumulative $1 exacta payoffs on the 12 contest races (with no payoff caps). This tourney offers a guaranteed purse of at least $2,000.
Good luck trying to qualify for the BCBC this weekend. Be aware that our very final qualifiers for it will take place at HorsePlayers on Wednesday and Thursday. And we wish you equally good luck should you simply be shooting for cash or some of the other fun onsite tournaments out there. No matter what the stakes, it’s always a great feeling to see your name up at the top of leaderboard. Enjoy the weekend.