Lone Star joins—and Del Mar rejoins—the weekend featured qualifier listings this week. Those are just two of 19 featured tourneys that include a number of popular cash games as well. The action gets started on Friday.
The first two of six guaranteed NHC seats this weekend will be offered in Friday’s $75 qualifier. The weekend slate offers mainly live-format tourneys but our Friday features, including this one, are Pick & Prays. Last Friday, Jonathan Andrews and Rob Ramirez scooped up NHC berths for just 75 bucks.
Also on tap Friday is our weekly up-to-$15,000 Pick & Pray with $7,500 Guaranteed. It’s $190 to enter, and the field is capped at 90.
There are once again five Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifiers at HorsePlayers this weekend—with at least one grand prize winner guaranteed in each—and the first of those five will take place on Friday.
It’s a Low Ratio Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifier with an entry fee of $500 entry and a winning ratio of 1 in 23. Obviously time is running out to qualify for the BCBC. You basically have just this weekend and next.
Contest races for Friday’s featured tourneys at both sites are the 5th and 7th from Laurel; the 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th at Keeneland; and the 5th, 6th and 8th from Belmont—10 races in all.
On Saturday, we offer three features, including the richest tourney of the weekend.
The day’s up-to-$30,000 live-format game carries a $17,500 guarantee (up from a $15,000 guarantee in recent weeks). The game has a $260 entry fee, and no more than 133 entries will be accepted.
Also to be run in live format is Saturday’s NHC “Maiden” qualifier on Saturday. It’s restricted to those who have yet to earn a 2020 NHC seat. The buy-in is $165 and one NHC spot is guaranteed. Because it is a restricted field and only one seat is guaranteed, there will be no NHC Tour points awarded in this competition. So go for the gusto!
They’re holding the Fall Classic at The Orleans this weekend, but in four months, The Orleans will host their signature handicapping tournament, the Horse Player World Series. You can win a $1,500 entry, a four-night hotel stay, and $500 for travel to the March 26-28 “major” in Saturday’s qualifier that costs $118 to play. One of every 25 entrants will win.
There are two featured tourneys at HorsePlayers on Saturday—both tied to the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge.
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, and note that this tourney is a Pick & Pray.
The other is a Super Low Ratio Pick & Pray. It carries an entry fee of $1,000, and the winning ratio is just 1 in 11. One grand prize is guaranteed here as well—even if fewer than 11 sign up. So keep an eye on enrollment. We’re back to a live format for this one.
The Saturday contest races for all of the day’s featured tourneys are: the 5th, 7th, 8th and 9th at Keeneland; the 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th and 11th from Belmont, where it’s Empire Showcase Day; the 8th through 10th races at Laurel, where it’s Maryland Million Day; and the 6th, 8th, 9th and 10th from Keeneland, where the feature is the Raven Run Stakes. That’s 12 races in all, and eight of them are stakes.
The Sunday schedule contains 11 featured events—nine of those right here at HorseTourneys.
Cash gamers will want to zero in on Sunday’s up-to-$20,000 tourney, which has $10,000 Guaranteed. The buy-in is $195, and the format is live.
There are two NHC qualifiers on Sunday. One is a special low-ratio Pick & Pray with an entry fee of $500 and a winning ratio of 1 in 21. One seat is guaranteed.
The other is a “regular”, two-seats-guaranteed live-format game with the more typical entry fee of $165.
A qualifier of special note this week is Sunday’s qualifier to the Lone Star Park NHC qualifier on December 7. One of every 10 entries, at $59 a pop, will win an entry to the Texas tournament. Win down there, and the date will certainly not live in infamy for you.
Also worth special mention is Sunday’s $325 live-format qualifier to the November 9-10 Del Mar Fall Challenge. The winning ratio here is 1 per 20, and winners receive a $5,000 entry to the contest plus travel to Del Mar (never an unpleasant place to visit).
There’s also a Horse Player World Series qualifier on Sunday…an entry-only affair. It’s a 1 per 20 tourney for an entry fee of $89, and winners receive a $1,500 HPWS entry for the big event next March.
Also up for grabs on Sunday are seats to the Flo-Cal Faceoff on February 29-March 1. The Faceoff is an online event with a Guaranteed purse of $100,000, though it’s a “No Limit” tourney, so the final pot could well exceed $100,000. On Sunday, you can win a $1,500 entry to the two-day, competition that will feature full-card racing from Gulfstream and Santa Anita during Fountain of Youth weekend. Sunday’s qualifier will be run in live-format mode with an $86 entry fee. The winning ratio is 1 in 20.
Getting back crass but wonderful side of cold, hard cash, there’s our up-to-$5,000 Exacta tourney with $1,000 Guaranteed. Players select a mythical three-horse-exacta box play in each of the 12 contest races, and the biggest overall returns, based on $1 payoffs, wins. Remember no payout caps ever in these exacta tourneys. What the exacta pays is what you’re credited with. The format here, as always, is live.
Just $8 gets you into our Pick 6 Jackpot tourney in which 70% of the net pool gets paid out to players via the normal, $2 win/place scoring method, while the other 30% goes to the Jackpot pool. Pick the winners of all six races and you win (or share, if multiple players do so) the Jackpot, which is now up to $3,178. This game is also always run in live format, so if you want to chase the Jackpot, you could conceivably just play the post-time favorite in every race. (We also try not to include too many mindbenders among the six races.)
Over at HorsePlayers, there are two live-format BCBC qualifiers—one a low-ratio game, and one a Super Low Ratio game (our second such offering in as many days).
The Low Ratio game (live-format) costs $500 to play and offers contestants a one-in-23 chance of a BCBC seat. One prize is guaranteed.
The Super Low Ratio qualifier is a Pick & Pray with a price tag of $1,000. Here, the winning ratio is one in just 11. One grand prize is guaranteed here as well.
As mentioned earlier, the Orleans Fall Classic is going on now, and dozens of HorseTourneys qualifiers are there, including Jobby and Lisa Blevins. Here was their Wednesday night training meal:
We wish all of you good luck this weekend…and the Blevinses good digestion.