Thanksgiving weekend is understandably being celebrated on a smaller scale this year—but not at HorseTourneys! With so many staying home, we’re ramping up with 24 marquee competitions from Thursday to Sunday, including five features on Turkey Day itself.
It’s a little strange to see Aqueduct dark on Thanksgiving. (Can’t remember that ever being the case before!) “Thankfully” Laurel and Del Mar are open to set the table for a four-course featured feast that includes a special Thursday edition of our Big Bucks tourney. It’s a $7,500 Guaranteed Pick & Pray with an entry fee of $1,150 (similar to our Sunday Big Bucks games except for the Pick & Pray part). As usual, payoffs go only to the top three finishers on a 70/20/10 basis, and if we reach the max of 20 (or so) players, the pot will exceed $20,000.
For $195, you can play our $15,000 Guaranteed No Limit cash game. It (like most of the featured tourneysthis weekend) is a Pick & Pray so can spend more time with your family and less time with your laptop or handheld device!
Each day of the weekend, we’ll be offering $118 qualifiers to the $150,000 Guaranteed Flo-Cal Faceoff here on January 9-10. Winners (1-per-15) get a $1,500 entry to the two-day cash contest consisting of mandatory full-card plays on both Gulfstream and Santa Anita. The Faceoff, of course, serves as the first leg in the new 2021 “Tourney Triple” series that also incorporates April’s Players Championship and August’s Spa & Surf Showdown.
On a Thursday/Friday/Sunday qualifying schedule this weekend are our qualifiers to both the January 23rd Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship and the December 5th Lone Star Park Simulcast Challenge. The Thursday versions of these are both Pick & Prays, with the Pegasus play-in requiring an entry fee of $384. That gives you a 1-in-20 chance at a $6,500 package for the event that can be played at either Gulfstream or Xpressbet.
The Lone Star Qualifier costs just $59 to play, and one of every 10 participants will earn a $500 entry for the onsite suburban Dallas test.
The Thanksgiving contest races are pretty straightforward—the last three (races 6 through 8) at Laurel and the final seven (races 2-8) from Del Mar. Note that there will not be any early-bird feeders for the Thursday featured tourneys due to a relative paucity of early-in-the-day races.
The day after Thanksgiving again offers Pick & Pray qualifiers to the Pegasus ($384), Flo-Cal Faceoff ($118) and Lone Star ($59)—but these are no leftovers. They’re all fresh and will taste just as good as on Thursday…especially if you do well.
Meanwhile, Friday will be anything but black if you win the day’s $10,000 Guaranteed No Limit Pick & Pray. It’s $190 to enter and there is no limit as to how high the purse can go.
HorsePlayers joins the holiday-weekend fun on Friday.
It’s a $75 NHC qualifier. Two seats are guaranteed, and NHC Tour points are also on the table. The winning ratio is 1-per-143.
Contest races for all of the featured games at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers on Friday are the 8th through 10th at Aqueduct; the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th from Del Mar and the 8th and 9th at Tampa Bay Downs. (Welcome back, Tampa!) That’s 10 races in all.
Pick & Prays remain the order of the day at HorseTourneys on Saturday.
The richest competition during the Thanksgiving weekend is Saturday’s $25,000 Guaranteed, No Limit Pick & Pray. It’s $260 to sign up.
The second of three “up-to-$20,000” Big Bucks games during the weekend guarantees $10,000. The entry fee is again $1,150, and entries are limited to 20 (unless we get a late arrival or two via last-minute feeders). The winner of this Pick & Pray gets 70 percent of the net pool.
Also in Pick & Pray mode is Saturday’s $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 Faceoff is the first leg of the Tourney Triple series that offers guaranteed bonus seats to the BCBC/NHC/The BIG One to the top three overall performers—and a $2 million bonus if someone sweeps all three legs…or a $1 million bonus if someone takes two out of three.
Saturday’s $15 Pick 4 Jackpot game starts out with a carryover of $1,871. If you get all four races right in this Pick & Pray, you win or share the Jackpot. Meanwhile, 70% of the net pool gets paid out to players via the traditional $2.00 win/place scoring system. (The other 30% goes to the Jackpot pool.) There is a maximum of three entries per player in this one.
Two guaranteed spots to the NHC serve as the target on Saturday at HorsePlayers.
Our first Live-format feature of the weekend is a “regular,” $165 Vegas qualifier. The entry fee is $165, and the winning ratio is 1-per-65.
Saturday contest races are still TBD…since this weekend preview is coming out a day earlier than normal this week.
We close out the Thanksgiving weekend with nine featured events—seven at HorseTourneys and two at HorsePlayers.
Sunday is your fourth consecutive day wins a seat to the Flo-Cal Faceoff ($118 entry fee/$1,500 entry as the grand prize). So if at first—or second or third—you don’t succeed, you can try, try again. Like the three before it, this Flo-Cal qualifier is a Pick & Pray.
The third Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship qualifier of the weekend is on tap for Sunday. The winning ratio for Sunday’s $384 Pick & Pray is 1-per-20. Winners pick up a $6,000 entry plus $500 for travel in case they decide to play from Gulfstream.
Sunday is also your third chance to grab a $500 Lone Star entry for December 5th in the Metroplex. It’s $59 a shot in this Pick & Pray and the winning ratio is 1 out of 10.
The other four Sunday features at HorseTourneys are all cash games.
There’s our $15,000 Guaranteed No Limit tourney. It’s a Pick & Pray with an entry fee of $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. The price tag is $1,150, and cash prizes go only to the top three. The Sunday Big Bucks event is always a live-format tourney…and this week’s is no exception!
Another competition that’s always run in Live format 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. Attention bargain shoppers: turnouts for this one have been light recently. Last week’s ran with no takeout to players.
We’ll have another $15 Pick 4 Jackpot tourney (Pick & Pray again) on Sunday. Check our home page or our Twitter feed on Saturday night for the Jackpot amount. It will depend on how many played Saturday’s Pick 4 Jackpot tourney—and whether anyone hit it.
HorsePlayers offers a featured-tourney doubleheader on Sunday.
There’s a 1-per-23 Low Ratio Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifier. The entry fee for this Live-format play-in is $500, and one $10,000 BCBC entry is guaranteed to be awarded…even if fewer than 23 take part.
Also on the Sunday menu is a $500, Low Ratio NHC Pick & Pray. Note that there must be at least 10 entries signed on for this game to “go.”
Enough contest talk. We wish you and yours a safe and Happy Thanksgiving. All of us here at HorseTourneys are thankful for YOU. Your enthusiasm and support are what makes this site as fun as it is.
And that kind of fun may have been more important this year than ever before.