It’s a busy weekend around here with five featured tourneys on Friday, eight on Saturday and 12 on Sunday. No fewer than six of those competitions involve the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge—now just two weeks away. The featured weekend action commences on Friday.
Opportunity #1 of the weekend to win a $10,000 entry into the world’s most prestigious live-bankroll handicapping contest takes place over at HorsePlayers.
It’s a Low Ratio BCBC Pick & Pray with a $500 entry fee and a winning ratio of 1-per-23. At least one $10,000 entry is guaranteed to be awarded.
Four marquee games are in Friday’s starting lineup here at HorseTourneys.
We’re now offering Flo-Cal Faceoff qualifiers each weekend day. The first of those is Friday with a $118 play-in. The $150,000 Flo-Cal Faceoff on January 9-10 is the first leg of the new 2021 Tourney Triple series made up of the Flo-Cal Faceoff, the Players Championship and the Spa & Surf Showdown. Tournament seats await the top three overall series performers, and if you win two of the three events, you earn a $1 million bonus. Win all three, and you get $2 million. (That’s a cherry that dwarfs the sundae!)
The most popular tourney of the weekend in terms of number of entries figures to be Friday’s $75 NHC Pick & Pray which guarantees two seats and also offers valuable NHC Tour points that can be accumulated to earn an NHC seat even if you don’t win an individual qualifier.
Sunday is the Santa Anita Last Chance BCBC Challenge at Xpressbet. One good thing about all the online contests these days is that we can offer qualifiers right up until the day before. So we’ll have Santa Anita play-ins on Friday and Saturday. Winners of Friday’s Pick & Pray get a $1,500 entry for the Santa Anita closing day competition.
We always have a fun cash game going on. Friday’s biggest one is a $10,000 Guaranteed, No Limit Pick & Pray. Entries are $190 each.
The contest races for Friday: the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 10th from Belmont; the 7th through 9th at Keeneland; and the first three from Woodbine—10 races in all.
There are six featured events at HorseTourneys on Saturday.
You already know from having read the above that we have a Santa Anita qualifier (Last Chance!) and a Flo-Cal Faceoff play-in on Saturday. The Santa Anita game will be run in Live format, while the Flo-Cal test is a Pick & Pray. Both are 1-per-15 affairs with $118 entry fees.
If you have yet to qualify for next August’s NHC, you can do so for $165 in Saturday’s “Maiden Special.” At least one winner is guaranteed, and you’re only allowed to compete and win if you haven’t yet punched your ticket to the big dance. Note that, since this is a restricted competition, no NHC Tour points will be awarded in this one.
The richest tourney of the weekend is Saturday’s $25,000 Guaranteed, No Limit Pick & Pray. The entry fee of $260 gets you into this live-format event…and since it’s the most lucrative event of the weekend, if you win, you not only get the money, we mail a trophy to your home to commemorate your success. So now you have two reasons to play!
There’s also Saturday’s $10,000 Guaranteed Big Bucks Pick & Pray. The entry fee is $1,150, and the field is limited to 20, unless there are latecomers due to last-minute feeders. As always with Big Bucks events, payoffs go only to the top three finishers—on a 70%/20%/10% basis.
The $8 Pick 6 Jackpot remains unspoken for despite a very close call two weeks ago from James Snyder who lost the final race by a head, and another one last week in which John Esterbrook also lost the final race—by a head! Anyway…it means that Saturday’s game will start out with a Jackpot of $26,809. That amount will be won or shared by anyone who can go 6-for-6. Seventy percent of net entry fees get paid out via traditional win/place scoring totals while 30% gets directed to the Jackpot.
The Pick 6 Jackpot races on Saturday are the first 5 races at Santa Anita; and race 11, the Maryland Million Classic, from Laurel. Across the six races, there are 36 betting interests before scratches. The entry deadline will be approximately 4:00 pm ET.
There are two Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifiers on the Saturday board at HorsePlayers.
Saturday’s “regular” BCBC qualifier has one grand prize guaranteed and carries an entry fee of $179. It’s a live-format tourney with a winning ratio of 1-per-65.
The winning ratio is just 1-per-11 in Saturday’s Super Low Ratio BCBC event. This is also a live-format tourney that guarantees at least one winner. The entry fee here is $1,000.
The 12 Saturday contest races are: the 8th through 10th at Laurel where it’s Maryland Million Day; the 5th, 7th, 8th and 9th from Keeneland (where it’s always a great day); and the 7th through 11th on the Empire Showcase Day card at Belmont.
On Sunday there are 12 NFL games.…and we have 12 featured tourneys. In our book, that means that we are as big and important as the NFL!
Such a heightened sense of self-importance is possible, in part, because we’ve expanded with two new “franchises.”
One of those new ones is the Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship. Sunday’s first qualifier to the South Florida tournament requires a $384 entry fee to participate. One in 20 will earn a $6,000 seat plus $500 for travel to Gulfstream for the January 23rd contest. (It’s been a while since we’ve been able to award a $500 travel stipend to anything!)
Another live, onsite tournament having its first 2020 qualifier on Sunday is the November 27-28 Club Hawthorne OTB contest. Actually, I should have said contests (plural). These are run as two, separate, single-day competitions costing $400 each. The winner(s) of Sunday’s $94 Pick & Pray receive $800 in entry fees—good for both days.
If Chicago in November isn’t your thing, perhaps Dallas in December is. If so, you can compete to win a $500 entry to the Lone Star NHC qualifier on December 5th. Entries are $59 apiece in this Pick & Pray, and one in 10 will win a $500 entry for Texas.
Sunday’s NHC qualifier is a “regular,” $165, Live-format game with a winning ratio of 1-per-65. Two “Bally’s Berths” are guaranteed.
Flo-Cal Faceoff qualifier #3 of the weekend is Sunday. Again, it’s $118 to enter and one of every 15 will earn a $1,500 entry to the $150,000 Guaranteed first leg of the 2021 Tourney Triple. The format is Pick & Pray.
Another Pick & Pray is Sunday’s $15,000 Guaranteed No Limit cash tourney. The entry fee is $195.
The Sunday Big Bucks tourney guarantees a purse of $7,500…and the purse for this Live-format game could reach $20,000 or a bit more depending on how many players we get. The entry fee is $1,150, and payoffs go just to the top three.
Our up-to-$5,000 Exacta tourney with $1,000 Guaranteed is always run in Live format. In this 12-race game, the challenge is to come up with a three-horse exacta box in each race. Scores are based on the cumulative $1 payoffs players record across the 12 races. The entry fee is $125, and no payoff caps are in effect.
The second of the weekend’s two $8 Pick 6 Jackpot tourneys is set for Sunday. Check our Twitter feed on Saturday night or our home page on Sunday for an update on what the Jackpot will be. It will be based on how many people participate in the Saturday Jackpot game (carryover: $26,809) and whether anyone hit it. (As we all know by now, losing by a head in the last race doesn’t count.) Like the Exacta tourney, the Pick 6 Jackpot game is always played in live-format.
With the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge so near, HorsePlayers is offering three BCBC qualifiers on Sunday. All are Pick & Prays guaranteeing one seat.
Pick your price point (or winning ratio, as the case may be). For $179, your winning ration is 1-per-65.
Sunday’s $500 Low Ratio qualifier pays out to 1-per-23.
If you step up to a $1,000 entry fee, your winning ratio gets knocked down to 1-per-11 in Sunday’s Super Low Ratio qualifier. (This is all kind of like paying points to buy down the interest rate on a mortgage.)
Speaking of various price points, you’ll want to play one or more of our big tourneys on Breeders’ Cup weekend. Feeders for those continue throughout the weekend.
Good luck to everyone playing. We hope it’s a fun and profitable weekend for you.