There’ll be a lot of picking and a lot of praying going on this weekend at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers. All but four of our featured events are Pick & Prays, and the cash and prizes available are worth saying some prayers for as well.
As always, the weekend—and the big games—begin on Friday. At HorseTourneys, the Friday feature is our up-to-$15,000 Pick & Pray with $7,500 Guaranteed. It’s $190 to enter and a maximum of 90 may take part.
HorsePlayers doubles down on the Friday featured fun with not one but two top tourneys.
Two guaranteed spots to the NHC are on the line in a Pick & Pray with a lower-than-usual entry fee of $75. That works out to a winning ratio of 1 per 143, though no fewer than two berths will be awarded no matter what.
There’s also a Low Ratio Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifier with a $500 entry and a winning ratio of 1 in 23. One $10,000 BCBC entry is guaranteed regardless of sign ups in this Pick & Pray.
Contest races for Friday’s features are the 5th, 7th and 8th from Gulfstream; the 7th through 9th at Laurel; the 4th and 8th at Belmont; and the 5th and 7th from Woodbine—10 races in all.
On Saturday, the Woodbine Mile will be prominent in our race schedules…among some pretty prominent tourneys.
This is the last weekend to earn one of the three remaining qualifying spots to The BIG One at Laurel on September 21-22. (Two of the five available buy-in entries—at $7,300 per entry—also can still be purchased via email at support@horsetourneys.com.) Ten NHC spots, five BCBC entries, five Pegasus World Cup entries and $75,000 in cash will be won at Laurel. We’ll offer one live-format qualifier on Saturday and the final one on Sunday. Saturday’s has two all-inclusive packages (entry, hotel, travel stipend, hotel/track transfers and full amenities) guaranteed. The entry fee is $495.
The weekend’s richest tourney is Saturday’s up-to-$30,000 Pick & Pray with $15,000 Guaranteed. It’s $260 to play.
NHC fans can compete for two guaranteed “Bally’s Berths” right here at HorseTourneys on Saturday via a “regular” Pick & Pray with an entry fee of $165 and a winning ratio of 1 per 65.
We also have a Pick & Pray qualifier for the October 13 Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge. Winners receive a $3,000 Keeneland entry plus $500 for travel to the beautiful Lexington, Ky., track. The winning ratio for this qualifier is 1 per 25, and entries cost $162 apiece.
The Saturday slate also includes a Pick & Pray qualifier to the Orleans Fall Classic. This one offers a $1,000 package ($500 entry plus $500 travel) to the October 17-19 three-day, mythical-money event at The Orleans in Las Vegas, where the prize pool contains nothing but cash.
At HorsePlayers, two more Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifiers—the second and third of four on the weekend—are on tap.
One is a “regular,” live-format game with an entry fee of $179, and a winning ratio of 1 in 65. One $10,000 entry/prize is guaranteed.
The other is a Super Low Ratio BCBC qualifier. With an entry fee of $1,000, the winning ratio here is a success-conducive 1 in 11. One grand prize is guaranteed here as well—even if fewer than 11 show up on game day.
The 12 Saturday contest races at both HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers are: the 6th, 7th, 10th and 11th at Laurel; the 8th and 9th from Monmouth; the 8th through 11th from Belmont Park; and the 9th (Woodbine Mile) and 11th at, you guessed it, Woodbine.
Sunday is our blockbuster day of the weekend with 11 featured events.
The day represents your first opportunity to qualify for the newly-announced Flo-Cal Faceoff on February 29-March 1. The Faceoff is a $100,000 Guaranteed, No Limit tourney modeled closely after last month’s Spa & Surf Showdown which was a resounding success in its debut appearance with a final purse of $272,000. You can be the first to win a $1,500 entry to the two-day, online event that will feature full-card racing from Gulfstream and Santa Anita during Fountain of Youth weekend. Sunday’s qualifier is a Pick & Pray with an $86 entry fee and one in every 20 entries will earn a place at the Faceoff.
When it comes to The BIG One, Sunday’s qualifier is The LAST One. The final spot will earned in this $495 Pick & Pray qualifier. Winners receive an all-inclusive package to Laurel for racing’s “High Expectation” tournament that awards 20 top contest seats, plus $75,000 in cash to a field of no more than 57.
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 permits 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.
There’s also a “regular” Sunday, $10,000 Guaranteed cash Pick & Pray. This one carries an entry fee of $195, so you could call it our Little Bucks tourney, except that there is nothing little about $10,000. This one is also an “up-to-$20,000” pool-style contest.
Two entry-only Pick & Pray qualifiers will be hosted on Sunday. One is to the October 13 Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge. One of every 10—at $352 per entry—will win a $3,000 seat to the Big Blue Nation competition.
The other is to the Orleans Fall Classic. The winning ratio is one per 10 here as well, though the entry fee for this game is just $59. Winners receive a $500 Fall Classic entry.
If it’s Sunday, it means we have an up-to-$5,000 Exacta tourney on the schedule. Our live-format game offers a guaranteed purse of $1,000, and players pick a mythical three-horse-exacta box play in each of the 12 contest races. The biggest overall return(s), based on $1 payoffs, wins. You can play for $125.
Our $8 Pick 6 Jackpot is now up to $2,805. In this low-entry-fee game, you pay $8 to enter and 70% of the net pool gets paid out to players via the normal, $2 win/place scoring method, while the other 30% is directed to the Jackpot pool. Pick the winners of all six races and you win the Jackpot. (Multiple winners would share the jackpot.) This game is always run in live format…so, if you like, you can play the chalk in every race to increase your odds of sweeping the six-race sequence.
Santa Anita is hosting a pair of tournaments on Saturday and Sunday, September 28 and 29. The Saturday contest is called the Win and You’re In Challenge. It has a $3,000 entry fee and offers four BCBC berths, two NHC spots plus $35,000 in cash (based on 80 entries). Sunday’s game is called the Opening Weekend Challenge and carries a $500 entry fee. On Sunday, players compete for two BCBC entries, two NHC berths and $10,000. We have a qualifier on Sunday in which, if you win, you receive entries to both contests. The entry fee for our qualifier is $205, and one of every 20 entries will move on to the highly challenging Santa Anita Challenges.
Over at HorsePlayers, there are co-features—a direct qualifier to the NHC and another to the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge.
The NHC play-in is a special $210 entry-fee tourney, which works out to a winning ratio of 1 in 50. This is a live-format affair, and two NHC seats are guaranteed.
The BCBC qualifier (the fourth and final of the weekend) is a low-ratio Pick & Pray where an entry fee of $500 buys you a 1 in 23 shot at a $10,000 BCBC seat. One prize is guaranteed.
We mentioned the Woodbine Mile once or twice earlier. That race will be of special interest to Edward Enborg and Edward “The Price is” Wright. The Edwards will be representing HorseTourneys on Saturday as qualifiers to the Woodbine Mile Horseplayers Tournament. In fact, Wright will be playing two $3,500 (Can.) entries—both won right here on consecutive weekends.
We wish them—and you—good luck and good fun this weekend.