Seventeen featured tourneys are slated this weekend. Twelve of them are Pick & Prays. So if that is your preferred format, then this is your kind of weekend. The action gets started on Friday.
Friday’s feature is our up-to-$15,000 Pick & Pray with $7,500 Guaranteed. It’s $190 to take part and no more than 90 entries will be accepted.
Contest races for the above Friday events will be the 6th, 8th, 9th and 10th from Saratoga; the 7th and 8th at Monmouth; the 8th and 9th from Laurel; and the 3rd and 4th at Woodbine—10 races in all.
On Saturday, a trio of featured Pick & Prays are on tap at HorseTourneys.
You may want to save your best prayers for one of our richest tourneys of the weekend—Saturday’s up-to-$30,000 event with $10,000 Guaranteed. You can play for $260, and entries are capped at 140.
Once again, there are two weekend opportunities to qualify for the Orleans Fall Classic and the Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge. Saturday’s Fall Classic qualifier offers a $1,000 package ($500 entry plus $500 travel) to the October 17-19 competition in Las Vegas.
Our Keeneland qualifier will send one or more players off to Kentucky on October 13 with a $3,000 entry plus another $500 for travel.
Though technically not a featured tourney (it’s a feeder), we want to call your attention to Saturday’s “Round 2” feeder to our big $65,000 Guaranteed cash game on Travers Day, August 24.
One of every five entries—at $116 per entry—will earn a $495 seat to the following weekend’s big-money tourney. So theoretically on Saturday, you can win money in our $17,500 game and also the promise of greater riches seven days later.
HorsePlayers has three features of its own—two Pick & Prays, one live tourney…two Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifiers, one NHC play-in.
The NHC qualifier is a Pick & Pray with an atypical entry fee of $210. That works out to a winning ratio of 1 in 50. At least two winners are guaranteed.
The other Pick & Pray is Saturday’s Super Low Ratio BCBC qualifier. The winning ratio here is just 1 in 11, and one $10,000 BCBC entry is guaranteed even if fewer than eight sign up. The entry fee is $1,000.
Saturday’s live-format tourney at HorsePlayers is a regular BCBC qualifier ($179 entry fee, one grand prize guaranteed). The winning ratio here is 1 per 65.
Contest races for Saturday at both HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers are: the 6th through 8th at Laurel; the 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th from Saratoga; the 10th and 12th from Woodbine; and the 4th and 5th from Del Mar—a dozen races all together.
More than half (10) of the weekend’s featured tourneys (17) come your way on Sunday.
The most time-sensitive of the bunch is our last-chance qualifier to the Monmouth Super NHC/BCBC qualifier on Saturday, August 24. At stake at Monmouth will be six NHC spots, two BCBC entries plus cash. An entry at Monmouth will cost $500 a week from Saturday, but you can win one here on Sunday for just $80. Winners of this Sunday’s qualifier also receive an additional $500 to help with your travel to Monmouth.
We have not one, but two $10,000 Guaranteed Pick & Prays on Sunday. One is our “Big Bucks” tourney, which has an $1,150 entry fee and allows no more than 20 entrants. Payoffs go solely to the top three finishers on a 70/20/10 basis, and if we attract a full field, the pot will exceed $20,000.
The other is our “regular,” Sunday, $10,000 Guaranteed game. This one carries a more modest entry fee of $195. This is also an “up-to-$20,000” pool-style contest, although here as many as 118 entries will be accepted.
Only a handful of opportunities remain to win an all-inclusive (travel, hotel, amenities) package to The BIG One, which will be held Sept. 21-22 at Laurel. Two packages are guaranteed to be awarded to the “high expectation” contest that offers 10 NHC spots, five BCBC entries, five Pegasus World Cup entries, plus at least $75,000 in cash. And those prizes will be divided up amongst no more than 57 entries! The entry fee on Sunday is $350.
The second of two weekend chances to the Orleans Fall Classic is scheduled for Sunday. This Pick & Pray is an entry-only contest…so it’s just $59 to play and one in 10 comes away with a $500 entry to the Fall Classic.
Another chance for the Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge on October 13 comes your way as well on Sunday. This Pick & Pray is a low-ratio, entry-only tourney. One of every 10 entries—at $352 per entry—receives a $3,000 seat to the Lexington, Ky., contest.
For those who don’t find picking one good horse a race difficult enough, there’s our up-to-$5,000 Exacta tourney (always run in live format) with a guaranteed purse of $1,000. Players pay $125 to enter, and then make a mythical three-horse-exacta box play in each of the 12 contest races. The biggest overall return, based on $1 payoffs, wins.
A nice windfall can be had for just $8 in Sunday’s $8 Pick 6 Jackpot tourney. Seventy percent of the net pool gets paid out to players via the normal, $2 win/place scoring method, and 30% is devoted to the Jackpot pool (which now stands at $2,523). Pick the winners of all six races and you win the Jackpot. Note that this is a live-format tourney.
Also to be run in live format is a Sunday NHC qualifier right here at HorseTourneys. It’s a “regular” qualifier with an entry fee of $165, a winning ratio of 1 in 65, and two NHC spots guaranteed.
There’s one featured tourney at HorsePlayers on Sunday.
It’s a live-format, low ratio, Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifier. An entry fee of $500 buys you a 1 in 23 chance of winning a $10,000 BCBC seat. One prize is guaranteed.
Before we close we want to send out special good-luck wishes to Edward Enborg, Thomas Olsen, James Zaccagnino and Ronald Peltz, who will be competing at Del Mar on Saturday in the Pacific Classic Betting Challenge having qualified at HorseTourneys.
The same goes for Bob Bandzwolek and Sean Nolan who are HorseTourneys’ special envoys (i.e. qualifiers) to Saturday’s Laurel Champions tournament.
May the six of you all emulate Ed Peters…who made over $60,000 in cash and tournament seats last Saturday as a HorseTourneys qualifier at the Fourstardave Challenge at Saratoga.
May the rest of you have a fun and winning weekend as well.