It wasn’t a Spa & Surf Showdown or Flo-Cal Faceoff weekend around here…but thanks in good measure to the better-late-than-never Preakness Stakes, more than $162,000 still went flying out the door last week—and that was just in our marquee events. The featured tourney fun—and winning—got rolling on Wednesday.
If Wednesday were a hockey game, the three stars at the end of it—in no particular order—would have been Michael “The Coach” Goodrich, Michael Caposio and Dale Hatfield.
Goodrich and Caposio ran one-two and were separated by just one dollar in Wednesday’s Keeneland Fall BCBC/NHC Online Challenge qualifier. Those scores earned each a $3,000 for the event that is now less than a week away. Goodrich had 3 wins and 2 places…with one of each coming in the final two races to get himself up into the high cotton.
Caposio came back with the same set of picks in Wednesday’s Flo-Cal Faceoff qualifier.
Caposio will be busy on Flo-Cal weekend (January 9-10) as well thanks to two pricey winners—Mobil Lady ($21.00, $7.40 in the 5th at Thistledown) and WW Springtime ($37.80, $19.20 in the 7th at Delaware) plus two places.
Goodrich and Caposio were separated by that same George Washington yet again in Wednesday’s $2,000 Guaranteed tourney, but this time they were outdone by Dale Hatfield.
Hatfield had WW Springtime among his 3 wins and 3 places, but it was a pair of modest ($4.20 and $6.60) place collections in the final two races that got him up and over the Michaels. For the victory, Hatfield received $1,589 from a final closing purse of $3,179…and, of course, the prestigious designation as one of the three Wednesday stars of the day
Two of Friday’s stars were Shane Muscarello and Sean Alvarez.
Six consecutive cashes (4 wins and 2 places) had Muscarello’s opponents saying “Come back Shane” in Friday’s Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge Low Ratio qualifier.
Meanwhile, in Friday’s Keeneland qualifier…
…Alvarez’s 4 wins and a place left players saying, “Come back Sean.”
The other available $3,000 Keeneland entry went to Mike Castagnoli (4 wins, 1 place) who nailed the last two races to get up for second-place.
Will Daugherty and Joseph Costello each punched their tickets to Vegas…
…for running second and third behind the already-double-qualified Brett Wiener in Friday’s $75 NHC qualifier. Wiener had 5 winners and Daugherty had 6—including each of the final three. Daugherty also added in an additional three placings for an impressive total of nine cashes from 10 races.
Preakness Day brought with it an extra-large, 14-race, all-stakes menu of contest races and an extra-large cash game.
Mack McClyment said. “Supersize me!” after coming up with one place and five winners that paid no less than $22.20 in the win hole. That sent a payoff of $26,987 to “Mickey C’s” following Saturday’s $50,000 Guaranteed tourney, which closed with a pot of $67,467.
Here’s a look at “Big” Mack’s highly-rewarding scorecard:
While all that was going on, U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Eric Moomey was flying in parallel formation over the same 14 races while on a separate mission in Saturday’s $20,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray.
Moomey ran out of fuel early, blanking on the last five races. Before that, however, he inflicted serious damage on the enemy, picking off 5 winners (4 of them at 10-1 or better) and a place to capture $13,253 from total spoils of $29,452.
Paul Sadler also enjoyed a successful foray into Saturday’s $10,000 Guaranteed Big Bucks tourney.
Sadler won the battle with 4 wins and a place that were capped off, and highlighted, by Swiss Skydiver’s win in the Preakness. He earned a winner’s share of $10,686 from a final pot of $15,266.
Over at HorsePlayers, all three of Ronald Peltz’s victors paid between $20.00 and $30.00.
Those three tallies plus 5 runners up got him the coveted $10,000 BCBC entry in Saturday’s “regular”, $179 qualifier.
Tim Whelan (4 wins, 2 places) had two $20.00+ horses…
…and that made a $1,000 entry fee look like a bargain in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge Super Low Ratio qualifier.
Back here at HorseTourneys, neither David Scharf on Saturday…
…or Dane Moore on Sunday…
…managed to go 6-for-6 in their $8 Pick 6 Jackpot victories. That means that next Saturday’s Jackpot will start out at $24,886.
The high score of the day on Sunday was put up by John Kite in taking the $15,000 Guaranteed cash game.
Kite had 3 winners in a row at one point, including Smiley Sobotka ($27.60, $10.40) in the 7th at Keeneland to finish with 5 firsts and 2 seconds and take home $8,930 from a total final pot of $19,846.
Here’s how Kite’s Sunday went:
Like Kite, Ryan Mueller and John Schulist also flew high on Sunday.
They each earned “Bally’s Berths” in the Sunday’s “regular” qualifier. Both Mueller (5 wins, 1 place) and Schulist (5W, 2P) had Smiley Sobotka. Schulist got up for 2nd by 80 cents thanks to having last-race 7-2 winner Call Me Wally in the 9th at Woodbine.
Call Me Wally also turned the tables at the end of Sunday’s $7,500 Big Bucks competition.
Here it was Phillip Conway who was delighted most to see the $9.90 winner cross the wire first. Conway won $9,261 from a total final pot of $13,240.
Steve “The Admiral” Nemetz and Howard Schwartz each emerged with $1,500 entries in Sunday’s Flo-Cal Faceoff qualifier—though they took distinctly different paths to the winner’s circle.
Nemetz (4 wins, 1 place) swept the final three tourney races to get up for first. Schwartz (3 wins, 1 place) blanked on the final four races, but held on for second.
Like Swiss Skydiver in the Preakness, Lisa Cipriano and “Get” Christy Moore beat the boys in Sunday’s Keeneland Fall BCBC/NHC Online Challenge (KFBNOC) qualifier.
Cipriano proved best despite getting zeroes on the first 5 races. She put up 3 wins and 2 places thereafter. Moore recorded 3 firsts and 3 seconds to finish $1.10 ahead of her husband Tim Yohler (3 wins, 1 places), who also won a $3,000 entry for coming in third. Despite living under the same roof—and presumably having access to the same race replays, workout reports, trip notes, magic 8-balls, et al.—Moore and Yohler had just two collections in common across their respective 12-race scorecards.
There are many fine Exacta tourney players out there, but we’ll go out on a limb and speculate that no one has had more success in these events than Frank Fosbre. On Sunday he added to his Exacta tourney resume (Good luck trying to get a job with one of those!) by narrowly defeating Alexa Zepp.
Both Fosbre (3 winners) and Zepp collected the $86.60 (for a dollar) payoff that was out there in the 7th at Keeneland. The difference for Fosbre, as is often the case in our tourneys, was his smallest cash—a $4.40 “hit” in the 7th at Belmont. That chalky mythical exacta meant a winner’s share of $765 in the $1,000 Guaranteed affair.
Last but not least, Derek Lapikas cruised to a $27.70 victory in Sunday’s Breeders’ Cup Low Ratio qualifier at HorsePlayers.
Lapikas selected four winners—all paying somewhere between $10.20 and $19.00—and added a couple of runners up for good measure to walk away with the $10,000 entry for next month. Robert Schwartz earned a $5,000 partial entry for finishing second.
Thanks to all for making this a pretty darned exciting Preakness weekend—even it if was four months late—and congratulations again to big winner Mack McClyment. See you back here next week