I’m back in the saddle after needing to take some time off to attend to a personal matter. It’s really good to be back. HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers has a total of 21 featured tourneys scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Most of them are Pick & Prays. Let’s take a look.
The Friday highlight is an up-to-$15,000 Pick & Pray. It carries an entry fee of $190 and has a guaranteed purse of at least $7,500.
Also on tap is a Horse Player World Series entry-only qualifier. This Pick & Pray costs $89 to enter and one of every 20 participants will earn a $1,500 HPWS entry at The Orleans (where I happen to be as I write this!).
There’s one featured tourney at HorsePlayers on Friday.
It’s a $75 NHC Pick & Pray with two spots guaranteed. Most of you will want to play in hopes of winning an NHC seat. Others may want to play in order to pick up some NHC Tour points. These $75 qualifiers typically attract bulky fields…so a good number of points should be available.
The 10 contest races for this event—and the two featured contests at HorseTourneys—are the 6th through 8th from Aqueduct; the 6th through 8th at Gulfstream Park West; the 2nd and 4th from Del Mar; and the 2nd and 4th at Woodbine. If nothing else, it might be easier to memorize the contest races on this day…not that we picked them for that reason!
Four more features come your way on Saturday, and again, the Horse Player World Series, the NHC and cash figure prominently.
The richest tourney of the weekend is Saturday’s up-to-$30,000 competition with $15,000 Guaranteed. It’s a Pick & Pray with an entry fee of $260.
Saturday’s Horse Player World Series qualifier offers not just a $1,500 entry, but a four-night hotel stay and a $500 travel credit. The entry fee for this full-package game is $118, and the winning ratio will be 1-per-25.
Monmouth gets in on the act starting this day with an entry-only qualifier to its December 28 Last Chance NHC event. One of every 10 entries in this $71 tourney will receive two entries (worth a total of $600) for Monmouth. Note that this game will be run in live format.
The Saturday feature at HorsePlayers offers a 1-per-50 shot at the NHC.
This “Kinda-Low-Ratio” qualifier costs $210 to enter. It, too, is a live-format game.
Two packages are assured.
Contest races for Saturday are the 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th and 10th from Woodbine; the 8th and 9th at the Big A; the 7th through 9th from Gulfstream Park West; and the 3rd and 5th from Del Mar—12 races in total.
It’s an even busier Sunday than usual at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers this week. Fourrteen featured events are on the docket, including 12 of them here at HorseTourneys.
Likely to attract strong interest are our pair of $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. Just the top three finishers get paid…on a 70%/20%/10% basis, and if we draw a full field, the pot will exceed $20,000.
The other $10,000 Guaranteed cash game is our weekly, $195 buy-in tourney. Entries for this one are capped at 118, and the pot could reach $20,000 depending on participation…but it won’t be less than $10,000.
A lucrative qualifier takes place on Sunday for the Pegasus World Cup Betting Challenge (January 25-26). One of every 20 entries in this $384 Pick & Pray will earn a $6,000 entry plus $500 for travel.
For the second consecutive day, you can win a spot (two spots, actually) in Monmouth’s Last Chance NHC qualifier on December 28. (Three NHC seats will be part of the prize pool at Monmouth.) The entry fee on Sunday is $71, and one in 10 will win. Unlike Saturday’s Monmouth qualifier, this one is a Pick & Pray.
A seat can also be won on Sunday to the two-day, February 29-March 1, Flo-Cal Faceoff. The Faceoff is an online competition offering a Guaranteed purse of $100,000, though it’s a “No Limit” tourney, so the final pot could well exceed that sum. It’s modeled after last summer’s popular Spa & Surf Showdown. On Sunday, you can pick up a $1,500 entry to the Faceoff, which will feature full-card racing from Gulfstream and Santa Anita during Fountain of Youth weekend. Sunday’s qualifier will be a Pick & Pray with an $86 entry fee. The winning ratio is 1 in 20.
A Last Chance qualifier comes Sunday in the form of our play-in to the Hawthorne Fall NHC Super Qualifiers on November 29-30. Winners of our Sunday, $94 Pick & Pray earn entry fees for each of the two single-day contests ($800 total). The winning ratio in this one is 1 per 10.
Also on the Sunday board is a Pick & Pray qualifier for the Lone Star Park NHC tournament on December 7. One of every 10 entries, at $59 each, will win a $500 spot in the Dallas Metroplex event.
Another opportunity to pick up an NHC seat comes at Fair Grounds in New Orleans on December 21. You can potentially snag a $1,500 entry to the NTRA/Fair Grounds Super Qualifier—plus $500 for travel to the Big Easy—for an entry fee of $118. One in 20 will win. This one will be run in live format.
Even easier than going to the Big Easy is winning an NHC seat from home and you can do that on Sunday via a Low Ratio, $500 qualifier. The winning ratio is 1-per-21 and the format will be live.
Of course, there’s a Horse Player World Series qualifier on Sunday…an entry-only Pick & Pray with a winning ratio of 1 per 20. The entry fee for this third HPWS qualifier of the weekend is $89.
Rounding out the Sunday featured schedule are a couple of fun cash games: our up-to-$5,000 Exacta tourney with $1,000 Guaranteed. Players in this one will select a mythical three-horse-exacta box play in each of the 12 contest races. The format here, as always, is live.
The other is our $8 Pick 6 Jackpot tourney. It’s a six-race tourney, of course, and 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 in excess of $3,400. This game is always run in live format, so if you want to “chalk out”, you can do just that.
There are two Pick & Pray qualifiers at HorsePlayers on Sunday—one to the NHC and one to the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge.
The NHC game s a “regular,” $165 qualifier with two spots guaranteed.
The BCBC qualifier is of the Low-Ratio variety. It costs $500 to get in the door, and one person is guaranteed to get out the door with a $10,000 entry to next year’s BCBC. The winning ratio, overall, is 1-per-21.
There you have it. May you find success this weekend and have reason to give thanks the following Thursday for even more than you already do. Good luck!