As we get closer to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, the featured-tourney pace remains brisk at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers with 22 marquee games this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The first half-dozen of those take place on Friday.
This weekend, we offer three qualifiers to the November 28th Del Mar Fall Challenge, which will be held exclusively at TVG.com. Friday’s edition is a Pick & Pray with a $236 entry fee. One of every 20 entrants will earn a $4,000 entry for a week from Saturday.
Thee are also daily (i.e. Friday, Saturday, Sunday) $118 qualifiers to the $150,000 Guaranteed Flo-Cal Faceoff here on January 9-10. Winners (1-per-15) get a $1,500 entry. The Faceoff is a two-day contest consisting of mandatory full-card plays on both Gulfstream (Flo) and Santa Anita (Cal). It’s an all-cash event that also serves as the first leg in the new 2021 “Tourney Triple” that later includes April’s Players Championship and August’s Spa & Surf Showdown.
Did you know that the top 100 scorers in each Tourney Triple event earn points that will determine who gets three special bonus prizes?
The top overall scorer earns a 2021 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge entry plus a 20 NHC seat (or $5,000 in cash in lieu of an NHC seat in case the winner is already double-qualified). The second highest points scorer gets an NHC spot (or $5,000 if double-qualified) and the third-place scorer gets an entry to the 2021 The BIG One.
Oh yeah—you can win a $1 million or $2 million bonus too if you can win two or three of the events outright. Not easy…but not impossible!
On a Friday/Sunday qualifying schedule this weekend are our qualifiers to the December 5th Lone Star Park NHC contest. Friday’s Pick & Pray requires an entry fee of $59 in order to take part, and one of every 10 entrants will get a $500 entry for the onsite Texas competition.
Cash-game enthusiasts will be zeroing in on Friday’s $10,000 Guaranteed No Limit Pick & Pray. The entry fee is $260, and there is no limit as to how high the purse could reach—but it won’t be less than $10,000.
On Friday, HorsePlayers is the scene for an always-popular $75 NHC qualifier.
Two seats are guaranteed, and plenty of NHC Tour points are likely to be distributed as well. Those could come in handy for earning a spot in Vegas…or a cash bonus from the NTRA.
Contest races for all of the featured games at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers are the 8th through 10th at Aqueduct; the 8th and 9th from Laurel; the 8th and 9th at Gulfstream Park West; and the 4th through 6th from Del Mar—10 in all.
We’ll crack open another six pack of featured tourneys on Saturday.
Take special note that Saturday’s $236 Del Mar Fall Challenge qualifier will not be a multi-track tourney. Instead, it will be contested on the full 9-race card at Del Mar (which seems appropriate given the prize).
The rest of the Saturday features are, indeed, multi-track affairs, including our $118 Pick & Pray qualifier to the Flo-Cal Faceoff. Winners (1-per-15) again receive a $1,500 entry to the big cash event here in early January.
The other three Saturday features here at HorseTourneys are all cash games.
The one with the biggest purse is Saturday’s $25,000 Guaranteed, No Limit Live-format cash game. It’s $260 to play.
The one with the stiffest entry fee is our up-to-$20,000 Big Bucks Pick & Pray with $10,000 Guaranteed. The cost to participate is $1,150. However, entries are limited to 20 (unless we get a late arrival or two via last-minute feeders), and payouts go only to the top three on a 70/20/10 percent basis. If we reach 20 entrants, the pot will top $20,000. Lots of money, not a lot of players.
We came close twice, but didn’t manage last weekend to give away the Jackpot in our $15 Pick 4 game. Saturday’s edition—a Pick & Pray—starts out with a $1,565 carryover. If you go 4-for-4, you will win or share the Jackpot. And just in case you”re not aware, in the Jackpot Pick 4 game 70% on the net pool gets paid out to players via the traditional $2.00 win/place scoring system. The other 30% gets directed to the Jackpot pool. There is a maximum of three entries per account.
The four Jackpot Pick 4 races on Saturday are: races 8 and 9 at the Big A and races 8 and 9 from Laurel. The tourney should last about an hour and 15 minutes from start to finish.
A guaranteed NHC seat is on the line Saturday at HorsePlayers.
It’s offered in a $165 “Maiden Special” restricted to those who have yet to earn a 2021 berth. The entry fee is $165, and no NHC Tour points will be awarded here since the field is restricted.
Contest races for our 12-race features on Saturday are the 8th through 10th at Aqueduct; the 8th and 9th from Laurel; the 7th, 8th and 10th at Woodbine; and the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th from Del Mar.
We have 10 games of high prominence on Sunday—eight here at HorseTourneys and two at HorsePlayers.
As mentioned earlier, Sunday is your third consecutive day in which to try and qualify to the Del Mar Fall Challenge ($236 entry fee/$4,000 entry as the grand prize) and to the Flo-Cal Faceoff ($118/$1,500). The winning ratio is 1-per-20 in the Del Mar play-in and 1-per-15 for the Flo-Cal. Both events will be run in Live format mode.
Sunday is weekend opportunity #2 to win a $6,000 entry (plus an additional $500 for travel) to the Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship on January 23rd. You can play the PWCBC onsite at Gulfstream or online via Xpressbet. The winning ratio for Sunday’s $384, live-format qualifier is 1-per-20.
Sunday is also your second chance (Friday being the first) to win a $500 Lone Star entry for December 5th down in Texas. It’s $59 per try in the live-format game and the winning ratio is 1 out of 10.
Cash-tourney specialists have four Sunday features to consider.
There’s our $15,000 Guaranteed No Limit tourney. It’s a live-format affair this week, and the entry fee is the usual $195.
The Sunday Big Bucks game guarantees $7,500 in the pot and, again, it could reach $20,000 in value if we sell it out. It costs $1,150 to participate and payouts go only to the top three. The Sunday Big Bucks is always a live-format tourney. (Saturday’s is always a Pick & Pray.)
Another always-live-format contest is Sunday’s up-to-$5,000 Exacta tourney with $1,000 Guaranteed. You pick a three-horse exacta box for each race, and whoever compiles the most money (based on $1.00 payoffs with no price caps in effect) wins. Keep an eye out for an overlay opportunity here…turnouts for this one have been light of late.
We’ll have another $15 Pick 4 Jackpot tourney (Pick & Pray) on Sunday. Check our Twitter feed on Saturday night for the Jackpot amount. It will depend on how many took part in Saturday’s Pick 4 Jackpot tourney—and whether anyone hit it.
HorsePlayers offers double-barrel featured-tourney action on Sunday.
There’s a 1-per-23 Low Ratio BCBC Pick & Pray. The entry fee is $500, and one grand prize (of a $10,000 entry) is guaranteed, even if fewer than 23 show up.
Also offered at HorsePlayers is a Live-format, 2-seats-guaranteed NHC qualifier. The entry fee is a touch higher than usual—$210. And that means that the winning ratio is a touch lower than usual—1 in 50.
Those are our 22 weekend features, and of course we have hundreds more games to pick from for as little as a couple of bucks. So choose your price point, choose your format and then…choose fast horses. Good luck!