The Flo-Cal Faceoff broke through its $150,000 purse guarantee last weekend and now sits at $165,937. That means that the purse will continue to grow with each successive qualifier—and we have a total of nine of them scheduled on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Each day we will offer $118 single-track qualifiers on the full cards from Aqueduct and Gulfstream plus a similarly-priced, 1-per-15 multi-track play-in.
The Flo-Cal qualifier is one of seven featured multi-track tourneys on Friday.
Winners of the Friday Flo-Cal multi-track qualifier (and also the single-track qualifiers) get a $1,500 entry to the two-day cash contest here on January 9-10. The Flo-Cal is the first leg in the new 2021 “Tourney Triple” series that also includes April’s Players Championship and August’s Spa & Surf Showdown.
The top 100 finishers in each event get points and the overall best performer based on point totals gets a $10,000 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge entry plus a 2022 NHC seat. Second best gets a BCBC entry, and the third-highest point-getter receives an entry into the 2021 The BIG One.
Wait, there’s more. If someone wins two of the three legs, he or she earns a $1 million bonus. A clean sweep of all three? That’s worth a $2 million bonus.
There are three other fun tournaments that you can win your way into on Friday.
Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship entries are on the line Friday (and again on Sunday). Friday’s play-in is a Pick & Pray, with the entry fee set at $384. One of every 20 entrants will earn a $6,500 package for the live-bankroll Pegasus event that can be played from either Gulfstream or Xpressbet on January 23rd.
Also offered on a Friday and Sunday this weekend are multi-track qualifiers to both the Santa Anita Opening Day Challenge on December 26th at Xpressbet and the onsite High Rollers tournament at Tampa Bay Downs on January 9th. The Santa Anita/Xpressbet tourney has an entry fee of $118 and carries with it a winning ratio of 1-per-15 with a $1,500 entry going to the winner(s). The Tampa qualifier requires an entry fee of $80 to participate, and one of every 15 contestants gets a $1,000 entry to the Oldsmar, Fla., event
Of course, cash games are a prominent part of the Friday featured mix.
For $190, you can pick up a significant amount of last-minute Christmas-shopping money in Friday’s $10,000 Guaranteed No Limit Pick & Pray. There is no limit as to how high the purse can grow.
We’ll also again offer a $7,500 Big Bucks Pick & Pray on Friday. Entries are $1,150 each, and payoffs only go to the top three finishers on a 70/20/10-percent basis. No more than 20 entries will be accepted, and if we sell out, the purse will exceed $20,000. It won’t be less than $7,500, though, no matter how few sign up.
This weekend and next, HorsePlayers will continue to offer just NHC qualifiers. The most crowded gathering of the weekend figures to be the Friday HorsePlayers feature.
It’s a $75 NHC qualifier. Two seats are guaranteed, and NHC Tour points will also be available to those who finish in the top 10 percent. The winning ratio is 1-per-143.
Contest races for all of the featured events at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers on Friday are the 6th, 8th, 9th and 10th from Aqueduct; the 6th through 9th at Tampa Bay Downs; and the 2nd and 3rd from Los Alamitos—10 races in all.
Seven more featured tourneys come your way on Saturday—six here at HorseTourneys and one at HorsePlayers.
The weekend’s richest competition is our $25,000 Guaranteed, No Limit cash tourney. This week, the format is Live. It’s $260 to play, and the purse is only limited by how many elect to take part.
Our 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 Saturday feeders). This one is a Pick & Pray and the winner earns 70 percent of the net pool. (The runner up gets 20 percent and the “show horse” gets 10 percent.)
Saturday’s $15 Pick 4 Jackpot tourney starts out with a carryover of $4,562 after going unhit again last week. 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 these Jackpot Pick 4 games.
Saturday’s multi-track qualifier to the Flo-Cal Faceoff will be run in Live format. Winners (1-per-15) pick up a $1,500 entry to the big-money event here in early January. Entries are $118 apiece.
Single-track, $118 Flo-Cal qualifiers will also be offered on the full-cards from Aqueduct and Gulfstream. If interested, don’t forget to sign up (and enter picks) early. Race 1 at those tracks comes around fast!
The Saturday feature at HorsePlayers is a $210 NHC qualifier.
The winning ratio for his Live-format play-in is 1-per-50. Regardless of participation, however, at least two NHC spots are certain to be awarded.
It will be a crowded feature slate on Sunday with no fewer that 11 marquee games here and at HorsePlayers. Ten of those are right here.
Cash-game specialists will be interested in our $15,000 Guaranteed No Limit tourney. It’s a Live-format competition this week that carries an entry fee of $195.
The Sunday Big Bucks game advertises a guarantee of $7,500, and it could reach $20,000 if it’s a sellout. The entry fee is $1,150, and prizes go only to the top three. The Sunday Big Bucks event is always run in live-format.
Another “always-Live” game 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 has the best overall (based on $1.00 payoffs with no price caps in effect) takes the top prize.
There’ll be 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 in Saturday’s Pick 4 Jackpot tourney—and whether anyone swept all four races.
As for qualifiers, Sunday is your third consecutive day to try and win a spot in the Flo-Cal Faceoff ($118 entry fee/$1,500 entry as the grand prize). The format here will be Live.
You can again look for single-track Aqueduct and Gulfstream qualifiers to the Faceoff. The same prices/prizes apply.
The second Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship qualifier of the weekend is on the Sunday docket. The winning ratio for this $384 Live-format contest is 1-per-20. Winners get a $6,000 entry plus $500 for travel…though they may play the Pegasus at Xpressbet instead of Gulfstream if they prefer.
Sunday also offers a $118 Pick & Pray qualifier to the December 26th Santa Anita Opening Day Challenge—to be played exclusively at Xpressbet. One of every 15 entries will earn a $1,500 entry to the contest held on Santa Anita’s traditional opening-day date (which always makes the Christmas season feel just a bit merrier).
For $80, you can shoot for a spot in the onsite NHC qualifier at Tampa Bay Downs on January 9th. Winners (1-per-15) get a $1,000 entry. As with almost all of the Sunday features, this format in this one is Live.
The Sunday HorsePlayers feature is restricted to those who have yet to earn a 2021 seat.
The entry fee is $165 for this Live-format test, and one seat is guaranteed, regardless of how many sign up. If we reach 130 entrants, however, a second spot will be added to the prize pool. Since it’s a restricted competition, no NHC Tour points will be offered here.
Depending on where you live, we wish you luck and success with your weekend handicapping, holiday shopping…and snow shoveling, We’ll be back to recap it all—minus the shopping and shoveling parts—on Monday.