I’m hard pressed to think of another weekend that contains two holidays. That’s the case this weekend with Valentine’s Day on Friday and Presidents Day on Monday. We’ll have featured-tourney action all four days, and should you win any of the games, your heart will undoubtedly skip a beat as the band strikes up “Hail to the Chief”.
What’s more romantic than telling your sweetheart over dinner, “Honey, you’re in love with a winner.”? You have three opportunities to make that dream a reality here at HorseTourneys on Valentine’s Day.
No one will care whether you went to Jared if you win our Friday, up-to-$15,000 Pick & Pray with $7,500 Guaranteed. The entry fee is $190.
You’ll really turn up the flame on Valentine’s Day if you do something nice for him or her this Friday and combine that gesture with the promise of a candlelight dinner next month at The Prime Rib Loft. That’s what’s possible (assuming you bring your own candles) if you win our Horse Player World Series Pick & Pray. One of every 20 entries, at $89 per entry, will be heading to that bastion of amour, The Orleans, on March 26-28.
Of course, many people these days find the love of their life online. So it’s therefore highly appropriate that we offer a Valentine’s Day qualifier to the February 29-March 1 Flo-Cal Faceoff. That’s our $100,000 Guaranteed online event featuring full-card, left and right swipes on horses strictly from Gulfstream and Santa Anita.
There are two events to spice up your Valentine’s Day at HorsePlayers.
Being all lovey-dovey one day out of the year is better than nothing. But think how your relationship would thrive knowing for the entire rest of the year that you are already qualified to the NHC? Now that would be a love with staying power! That rare distinction could be yours if you win Friday’s $75 Pick & Pray with two seats to the 2021 event guaranteed.
If your significant other is more the materialistic sort, then a $10,000 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge entry could be your Valentine’s Day ticket. You can win one of those for $500 in a Low Ratio Pick & Pray with a winning ratio of 1 per 23 (better odds than hopefuls get on The Bachelor).
Contest races for Friday are the 7th through 9th at Tampa, the 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th from Santa Anita; and the 7th, 9th and 10th at Gulfstream—10 races in all.
If Saturday finds you with a Love Hangover, then Hair of the Dog—and, I think, Diana Ross—both suggest that the cure is more featured tourneys. We have five of those at HorseTourneys on Saturday.
We’re already up to our Last Chance qualifier to the February 22 Santa Anita February Challenge. You can pick up a $500 entry to this on-track event for $59 in Saturday’s 1-per-10 live-format competition.
There’s also a “first chance” to offset our Last Chance. It’s our initial qualifier to the March 7 Gotham Challenge at Aqueduct. This 1-per-10 game offers $500 entries to The Big A.
The (dual) holiday weekend’s richest game is Saturday’s up-to-$30,000 tourney with $17,500 Guaranteed. It’s $260 to enter.
If your sweetie winds up disappointed on Friday because you didn’t win the Horse Player World Series qualifier, you can redeem yourself and then some in our full-package, Saturday HPWS qualifier. Victorious competitors get not just a $1,500 entry, but a four-night hotel stay, and a $500 travel credit deposited into your HorseTourneys account. The entry fee here is $148, and the winning ratio is 1-per-20.
We also have a qualifier on Saturday to the April 19 Keeneland Grade One Gamble. It’s $236 to play, and one in 20 will earn a $4,000 package to the “Goodman Gamble,” where players will vie for cash, NHC seats and BCBC entries.
A Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge seat will be the object of everyone’s attention at HorsePlayers on Saturday.
It’s a “regular,” $179 Pick & Pray with one $10,000 seat certain to be awarded. The winning ratio here is 1-per-65. and one package is certain to be awarded.
Contest races on Saturday are the 7th through 11th at Tampa, the 8th and 9th (including the General George Stakes) from Laurel; the 10th and 12th at Gulfstream; and the 5th through 7th from Santa Anita. That’s a dozen races in total.
Ten featured contests are on tap Sunday at HorseTourneys, plus two more at HorsePlayers.
Making its first appearance on our roster is a qualifier to this year’s always-popular Monmouth Pick Your Prize tournament, which takes place on June 1. Whether you’re interested in the NHC, the BCBC or just cold, hard cash, Monmouth has a prize for you on June 1. Players will be putting up a $148 entry fee on Sunday, and one of every 20 will be taking home a $2,000 Jersey Shore entry…and another $500 to get themselves to the Jersey Shore.
We have two $10,000 Guaranteed cash tourneys on Sunday. One is our “Big Bucks” game, which carries 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 draw a full field, the pot will exceed $20,000. These Big Bucks games are always run as Pick & Prays.
A smaller entry fee ($195) gets you into our other up-to-$20,000/$10,000 Guaranteed cash game. Entries to this one are capped at 118, and it will be run this week in live format. So you can not only pick your entry fee among our $10,000 Guaranteed tourneys, but your format as well. (Or you can just play in both!)
Another chance to qualify for the 2020 The BIG One at Laurel takes place on Sunday. Fifteen contest seats and at least $75,000 in cash will be at stake September 19-20—shared among a field that will number no more than 57. The qualifier carries an entry fee of $395 and entires are capped at 26. One prize is guaranteed. Winners receive an all-inclusive package that includes hotel, travel stipend, welcome dinner, top shelf amenities at Laurel and more. At The BIG One, the top 10 finishers will receive cash bonuses plus their choice of a seat to the NHC, BCBC or Pegasus World Cup. Finishers 11-15 get either $1,500 or a Horse Players World Series entry. (Their choice.)
Also on the Sunday slate is a Low Ratio qualifier to the April 19 Keeneland Grade One Gamble. It’s $460 to play this live-format event, and one in 10 will pick up a $3,500 Keeneland entry plus $500 for travel.
We’re back to an entry-only qualifier for Sunday’s Horse Player World Series play-in. It’s $89 to take part, and one in 20 will earn a $1,500 entry to the “March Major” in Vegas.
Our Sunday qualifier to the $100,000 Guaranteed Flo-Cal Faceoff also offers $1,500 entries as its reward. The entry fee is $86, and the winning ratio is 1 per 20. Note that time is running out to earn seats via qualifiers to the Faceoff. The drop of the puck is now just 16 days away.
Three-thousand dollar entries (plus $500 travel stipends) are up for grabs in Sunday’s TSG Ultimate Betting Challenge qualifier. The event takes place on March 7 and may be played at Gulfstream, Santa Anita or at xpressbet.com. One of every 20 entries—at $207 per entry—will prosper in this live-format affair.
Two live-format cash games round out the Sunday featured docket at HorseTourneys:
One is our up-to-$5,000 Exacta tourney with $1,000 Guaranteed. Players pick a three-horse-exacta box in each of the 12 contest races, and your score is credited with the returns of a $1.00 base play. No price caps are in effect in our Exacta tourneys. So there’s always hope.
There’s also our $8 Pick 6 Jackpot tourney. Seventy percent of the net pool goes to top finishers via the normal, $2 win/place scoring method, while the other 30% is directed to the Jackpot pool. No one has hit the Jackpot yet…which is now up to $5,015. If more than one get all six races right, the Jackpot is shared.
At HorsePlayers, there are co-features on Sunday—both live-format tourneys.
One is a 2021 NHC qualifier with an entry fee of $165. The other is a Low Ratio Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge play-in. It’ll run you $500 to participate here. Two seats are guaranteed in the NHC game; one in the BCBC event.
We haven’t quite finalized our President’s Day menu, but we think you’ll enjoy it bigly. Check back to our home page for all of the Monday featured tourney selections.
Whether you’re focused more on passion or patriotism, we hope you enjoy your long weekend—and that you mix in a little bit of prescient picking as well. Good luck!