It’s the best gambling weekend of the year for horseplayers, and HorseTourneys is ready to supercharge it further with 22 featured events that include $213,000 in guaranteed cash and a slew of seats at upcoming contests. The much-anticipated weekend action begins on Friday.
If you thought the pandemic would lead to a bunch of short fields and uninteresting betting races at the Breeders’ Cup…you were wrong! With very few exceptions, the Friday and Saturday races are deep and tough—and the Friday and Saturday cards at Keeneland will supply all the races for our featured tourneys each day.
We also have a pair of featured, 2-day tourneys that cover just the 14 Breeders’ Cup races (five on Friday and nine on Saturday). Let’s take a look at those first.
You’ll have two robust days of action—and a lot of money—if you win our 2-day $40,000 Guaranteed No Limit cash tourney. It’s a live-format event with an entry fee of $495 and no ceiling on how high the purse can grow. Closing time is approximately 2:30 pm ET, when the horses break from the starting gate for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint.
The same schedule and format applies to our 2-day qualifier to the $150,000 Guaranteed Spa & Surf Showdown on January 9-10. This is a $118 game with one of every 15 earning a $1,500 entry to the first leg of the 2021 Tourney Triple, which includes the Players Championship in April and the Spa & Surf Showdown in August. Top overall performers in the three Tourney Triple competitions get important contest seats as a free bonus. If you win two of the three legs, you earn a $1 million bonus. Can you sweep all three? Not easy…but if you can, there’s $2 million waiting for you.
There are also four “Friday-only” features at HorseTourneys.
Note that all of these Friday-only events are made up of the full card at Keeneland on Friday—10 races…11:30 am ET first post. (That’s 8:30 am for those of you in the Western time zone).
For cash gamers, there’s a $25,000 Guaranteed No Limit tourney to be run in live format. The entry fee is $395.
We also offer a $10,000 Guaranteed No Limit Pick & Pray. The entry fee here is $260.
On the qualifying front, there are not one but two Flo-Cal Faceoff play-ins. One is a live-format game, the other a Pick & Pray. The entry fee in each case is $118, and the winning ratio for both is 1-per-15.
On Breeders’ Cup Friday, the NHC gets welcomed back into the fold at HorsePlayers.
It’s a $75 qualifier with two spots guaranteed and plenty of NHC Tour points up for grabs. This tourney, as well, will be contested on the full card at Keeneland.
As exciting as Friday figures to be, the stakes only increase on Breeders’ Cup Saturday.
For live-format cash-game specialists, there’s a $75,000 Guaranteed No Limit competitions. Pick & Pray preferrers have a $40,000 Guaranteed tourney to look forward to. It’s $495 to enter the $75,000 game and $395 to compete in the $40,000 Pick & Pray.
Again on Saturday we offer a pair of $118 Flo-Cal Faceoff qualifiers—one Live, one Pick & Pray.
There’s also a 2-seats-guaranteed NHC qualifier here on Saturday. It’s $165 to play, and it’s a live-format game so you can make your picks race-by-race if that’s your thing.
One programming note and one piece of advice: the 12 featured-tourney races on Breeders’ Cup Saturday consist of the full card from Keeneland. It has a start time of 10:15 am ET and 7:15 am Pacific time. That’s early. So set your alarm clocks if need be, and we suggest you populate picks well in advance (especially in Pick & Pray games), just so you have horses in there in case life gets in the way (or you oversleep) and you don’t get to log in and update your picks like you expect.
HorsePlayers takes the day off on Saturday…but not on Sunday.
There’s a live-format NHC “Maiden Special” for those who have yet to qualify for the big dance next August. Since this is a restricted contest, NHC Tour points will not be on the table, but this is a good opportunity to qualify since many top players won’t be allowed in…and because many others may be suffering from a Breeders’ Cup hangover.
That same “strike while others are napping” theory applies just as relevantly on Sunday here at HorseTourneys.
After a rare Saturday off, the Big Bucks tourney is back on Sunday. It costs $1,150 to play (hence the name), but $7,500 is guaranteed and entries are limited to 20 (unless last-minute feeders push it slightly above 20). Payouts, which could exceed $20,000 if we draw a full field, go only to the top three finishers. This one is a live-format game.
Another live-format cash tourney is Sunday’s $15,000 Guaranteed No Limit game. It’s $195 to play.
Gimmick players will enjoy Sunday’s up-to-$5,000 Exacta tourney with $1,000 Guaranteed. In this live-format, 12-race competition, the task is to come up with a three-horse exacta box in each race. Scores are tallied based on the cumulative $1 payoffs players amass over the 12 races. The entry fee is $125, and no payoff caps are in effect.
On the Sunday qualifying front, you can shoot for a $6,000 seat to the Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship. An entry fee of $384 is required in order to participate. One in 20 will win, and a $500 travel stipend for the January 23rd contest will also be awarded.
Seats worth $4,000 are the target in Sunday’s Del Mar Fall Challenge qualifier. The entry fee for this live-format play-in is $236 and one in 20 will advance to the Fall Challenge—which takes place exclusively at TVG.com on November 28th
That same weekend (November 27-28) js when the Club Hawthorne OTB contests will be held in Chicagoland. These are run as two, separate, single-day competitions costing $400 on Saturday and $500 on Sunday. Win Sunday’s $106 qualifier, and you’ll receive $900 in entry fees—enough for both days.
Just a week after Hawthorne and the Del Mar Fall Challenge is the Lone Star NHC qualifier on December 5th. If you enter our $59 Lone Star play-in, you could win a $500 entry fee for this Dallas Metroplex contest.
Last but certainly not least is Sunday’s Flo-Cal Faceoff qualifier (our 5th of the weekend!). Today, there’s only one of these, which means we choose the format (Live) instead of you…but the entry fee ($118) and grand prize ($1,500 entry to the $150,000 Guaranteed cash event on January 9-10) remain the same.
We wish a fun and successful Breeders’ Cup to all of you, and we’ll be rooting for the many HorsePlayers qualifiers who will be competing in the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge.
We’ll also be rooting for the visitors to our site who will be checking things out here for the first time. We understand that $10,000 buy-ins (or $1,150 or even $100) is not for everyone. So we have Breeders’ Cup games this weekend for as little as $3.00. Whether it’s a head-to-head game, a Survivor tourney, an exacta contest, a 6-race tournament or a good old-fashioned win/place competition, we think you’ll find something fun that’s well within your budget. So have fun, and good luck!