Last Saturday, Paul Sadler selected Maximum Security and won $22,500 in our Florida Derby Day $50,000 Guaranteed event. This Saturday, it could be you and your Derby horse that get the spotlight…and the money…in our Wood/Blue Grass/Santa Anita Derby Day $35,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray. It’s the highlight of an 18-featured-tourneys weekend that gets started on Friday.
Top billing on Friday goes to our up-to-$12,500 Pick & Pray with $5,000 Guaranteed. It has an entry fee of $190 and entries are limited to 75.
There’s also an important “Round 2” feeder to Saturday’s $35,000 game. This direct feeder costs $116 to enter and one of every five players will earn a $495 entry to Saturday’s big-money tourney.
Contest races for the Friday features are the 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th from Keeneland; the 1st and 5th from Santa Anita; and the 6th, 8th and 9th at Aqueduct—10 races in all.
Saturday is a big day on the Kentucky Derby trail…and a big day for HorseTourneys players.
For the second-straight weekend we go well beyond our typical Saturday prize structure. This week, to celebrate Wood Memorial, Blue Grass and Santa Anita Derby Day, it’s a $35,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray with no limit as to how high the purse could grow. The entry fee is $495 to play (and, as noted earlier, you could win your way in for $116 on Friday).
The other Saturday feature is very big as well—our last-chance qualifier to the April 14 Keeneland Grade One Gamble. One per every 15 entries (at $275 per entry) will earn a $3,500 package to one of the most popular racetrack tournaments on the calendar a week from Sunday.
Over at HorsePlayers, there are three featured tourneys on Saturday, including one that no one should miss.
We mean that…because it’s free to all 2019 NHC Tour members: a “Round 1” NHC qualifier. As you may or may not already know, the NTRA shifted away from a single-day free qualifier format after the last event where there was a seven-way tie for first among people who just played the #4 horse in every race. Under the new format, the top 10% of Saturday finishers will advance to a Sunday qualifier in which the top five will all receive NHC packages. And if you like, you can still pick the 4 in every race!
If you don’t like free contests because you think they involve too much riff-raff, then we look forward to seeing you in a contest that’s sure to please your discriminating palate—a Super Low Ratio Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifier with an entry fee of $1,000, a winning ratio of just one in 11 and one $10,000 entry/prize guaranteed.
If you’re more of a middle-of-the-road person when it comes to qualifying contest, then perhaps you will prefer Saturday’s “regular” BCBC Pick & Pray, with more familiar entry fees and winning ratios of $179 and 1 in 65, respectively. Here again, one prize is guaranteed.
Contest races for Saturday are the 6th through 10th at Keeneland, the 9th through 11th at Aqueduct and the 6th through 9th from Santa Anita. That’s a dozen races in all–nine of them stakes including all three of the big Derby preps.
On Sunday morning, we’ll know most of the Kentucky Derby field—and who’ll be playing for the college basketball national championship on Monday night—but we won’t know the results of 11 important tourneys taking place on Sunday afternoon.
Two of those 11 are $10,000 Guaranteed cash games. One is our “Big Bucks” Pick & Pray with an entry fee of $1,150 and a maximum of 20 entries. The other is a more conventional tourney (also a Pick & Pray) with an entry fee of $195 and up to 118 playing slots available. Both have pots that could swell as high as $20,000, depending on participation.
There are two other Sunday cash events on the schedule: our up-to-$5,000 Exacta box tourney, and the Pick 6 Jackpot tourney.. This Exacta game (always run in live-format) offers a guaranteed pot of $1,000 and requires participants to make a three-horse exacta box play in each contest race. The winner is based on total return from a $1.00 base play. This tourney carries an entry fee of $125 and entries are capped at 45.
Meanwhile the Pick 6 Jackpot event offers 70% of the net pool to the winners and 30% to those who pick all six of the contest races correctly. If no one does that, then the 30% goes into the carryover pool for the next event. This contest carries an entry fee of just $55, and the carryover amount currently sits at $1,438.
Sunday is also a great day to win a seat to one or more top brick-and-mortar tournaments taking place around the country this year. One such opportunity is for The BIG One at Laurel Park. The entry fee of $350 gets you a shot to win an all-inclusive package to the high-expectation contest in September that will offer 10 NHC seats, five BCBC spots, five Pegasus entries, five HPWS entries, plus a guaranteed cash prize pool of at least $75,000. Once again in 2019, there will be no more than 57 entries allowed at The BIG One, so those 25 prizes will be split up amongst no more than 25 people. And since Sunday’s qualifier is guaranteed, one package will be awarded no matter what.
Thirty-one entries have already been snapped up for the August 3-4 Spa & Surf Showdown, and on Sunday, you can earn one of your own to the $100,000 Guaranteed, two-day, online tournament that will only focus on races from Saratoga and Del Mar. Sunday’s Pick & Pray costs $113 to play and one of every 20 will win a $2,000 entry.
Speaking of “The Spa,” we also offer a Sunday qualifier to the Saratoga Challenge, held this year on Friday and Saturday, August 9-10. Win this one-per-25 qualifier ($166 entry fee) and you’ll be the recipient of a $3,500 package, including $3,000 in entry fees that will cover you for both of the single-day tournaments on the 9th and 10th.
There’s also a qualifier on tap this Sunday to the April 28 Steve Sexton Mile Day Challenge at Lone Star Park. This is an entry-only contest with one per every 15 entries—at $79 each—moving on to the big day in Texas with a $1,000 entry.
We mentioned earlier that the Keeneland Grade One Gamble is a very popular tournament stop. So is the Monmouth Pick Your Prize tournament. On Sunday, ou can win your way into this June 1 event for $117. One in 25 will earn a $2,000 entry plus an additional $500 for travel.
Two more featured tourneys—one live, one Pick & Pray—are on the menu at HorsePlayers on Sunday.
One is a live-format, “regular” NHC qualifier with two spots guaranteed, and a $165 entry fee.
The other is a low-ratio Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge contest with one in 23 earning a $10,000 entry. This one is a $500 Pick & Pray, and one grand prize (a $10,000 entry) is guaranteed to be awarded even if we don’t reach 23 sign ups.
There are also full-card, Keeneland-only tourneys to keep an eye out for all weekend long.
Special good wishes on Saturday go out to John Gaspar, Sean Nolan (two entries), Marc Racenstein, Jeffrey Amster, Daniel Edwards, Anthony Trimarchi, Jason Alonzo and Paul Buttafuoco. All will be representing HorseTourneys as qualifiers to the Wood Memorial Challenge at Aqueduct.
Whether you take a mighty swing at one of the four-figure “Big Bucks” or BCBC tourneys or simply take a flyer on the free NHC qualifier, we wish you fun and good luck.