There’s a big showdown on Sunday between Kansas City and Tampa Bay. You’ll note, though, that NFL organizers wisely decided to start the game late enough (6:30 pm ET) so that it wouldn’t get crowded out in the hearts and minds of bettors by the true spectacle of the day—the HorseTourneys featured schedule.
That Sunday schedule is made extra super by the presence of two new qualifiers—one for the Keeneland Grade One Gamble on April 19th and the other for the NYRA Bets Gotham Challenge on March 6th.
If our Sunday schedule is super, then our Friday and Saturday schedules certainly qualify as at least excellent. (Maybe that’s what the NFL should call their conference championship games…the Excellent Bowls.) Let’s take a look at the Friday starting lineup.
Your very first opportunity to earn a $3,000 entry to the NYRA Bets Gotham Challenge (just four short weeks away) comes on Friday in a $236 Pick & Pray. One of every 15 entrants will move on to the big event that will be held, appropriately enough, at NYRA Bets.
The NYRA Bets Challenge isn’t the only important online contest to be held on March 6th. There’s also the TSG Ultimate Betting Challenge. On Friday, you can win a $3,000 seat to that one too. The parameters are the same as with the Gotham Challenge—$236 to play in the qualifier, one in 15 advance, and the format is Pick & Pray.
We’re up to 58 spots already filled for the $200,000 Guaranteed Players Championship here on April 2-3. We’ll have a multitrack qualifier to it on Friday. Players Championship qualifiers carry an entry fee of $156 and one of every 15 contestants will garner $2,000 entries to the middle leg of the Tourney Triple…which offers the top three overall performers seats to such events as the NHC, the BCBC and The BIG One.
We haven’t forgotten about cash gamers. For them, there’s our $15,000 Guaranteed No Limit Pick & Pray. The entry fee here is $190.
Contest races for the Friday multitrack features are the 7th through 10th at Gulfstream Park; and the 3rd through 8th from Santa Anita—10 races in all.
It’s a Pick & Pray weekend this week at HorseTourneys, and all of our Saturday features will be of the “Set it and forget it” variety.
One of them is Saturday’s $25,000 Guaranteed No Limit tourney. The entry fee is $260. This one is our richest competition of the weekend. The final purse is only limited by how many people take part…but it won’t be less than $25,000.
Saturday’s “up-to-$20,000” Big Bucks game is always run as a Pick & Pray. The purse is guaranteed at $10,000, and entries are limited to 20 (unless we get a late arrival or two via early Saturday feeders). Payoffs go only to the top three finishers with the winner sweeping up 70 percent of the net pool, the runner up getting 20 percent, and the third-place finisher earning the remaining 10 percent.
There will, of course, be a multitrack qualifier to the Players Championship—with one of every 15 entrants, at $156 per entry, receiving a $2,000 spot in the all-cash, two-day bonanza here on April 2-3.
We’ll also have a single-track qualifier or two for the Players Championship on Saturday. Check our homepage for schedule updates.
The carryover into Saturday’s $15 Pick 4 Jackpot is back over figures at $1,037. In our Pick 4 Jackpot tourneys, if you go four-for-four, 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.) Entries in these Jackpot Pick 4 games—always run as Pick & Prays—are limited to three per person.
The Pick 4 Jackpot races on Saturday are the 9th and 11th from Tampa; and the 5th and 6th at Santa Anita.
HorsePlayers gets off the featured-tourney bench on Saturday with a pair of marquee games, and they’re both Pick & Prays too.
One is a $179 qualifier to the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge with a winning ratio of 1 per 65 and at least one $10,000 entry definitely headed out the door
The other is a special $100 Pick & Pray qualifier to the 2022 NHC with two seats guaranteed. The winning ratio in this one is 1 in 100 (similar to Super Bowl squares).
The 12 Saturday contest races for our traditional multitrack features are the 8th through 12th from Gulfstream; the 7th through 9th at Aqueduct; the 1st and 3rd from Santa Anita; and the 9th and 10th at Tampa.
Sunday is a day for action. I see where James “Mattress Mac” McIngvale just made his seemingly annual Super Bowl plunge—$3.46 million on the Buccaneers +3 1/2 (-127). If the Bucs don’t cover, that’s a month’s worth of Runhappy ads and sponsorships down the drain.
The stakes we’ll be playing for here on Sunday are lower than that—but still definitely worth winning.
As noted at the top, Sunday is your first opportunity to pick up a $3,500 package ($3,000 entry plus $500 for travel) to the always-popular Keeneland Grade One Gamble on April 19th when the competition can be played either on track at Keeneland or via Xpressbet. One of every 20 Pick & Pray entrants, at $207 per pop, will secure his or her spot in the live-bankroll contest on April 19th.
Sunday is your second chance of the weekend (and of all time) to earn a NYRA Bets Gotham Challenge seat for March 6th. An entry fee of $236 gets you into the Pick & Pray, some good handicapping gets one of every 15 out of it, and on to NYRA Bets.
The only thing better than having a Gotham Challenge entry on March 6th is to have a Gotham Challenge entry AND a TSG Ultimate Betting Challenge on the same day. You can get into the TSGUBC (has a nice ring to it) qualifier for $236 and, similar to the Gotham deal, one of every 15 entrants will earn a $3,000 entry to the online event (that, in this case, will be hosted at Xpressbet).
Not held on March 6th is the Players Championship. One of every 15 in our multitrack “PC” qualifier will have parlayed a $156 entry fee into a $2,000 seat at our table for the $200,000 Guaranteed event here on April 2-3. In addition to a Sunday multitrack Pick & Pray, we’ll likely have a Gulfstream single-track play-in (also $156) for the Players Championship as well. Check the home page schedule for up-to-the-minute developments/offerings.
In the cash column of the Sunday schedule is our $20,000 Guaranteed No Limit Pick & Pray. The entry fee is $195.
No picking and praying here. The Sunday Big Bucks tourney will be run as a 12-race, all-mandatory, live-format game. It has a guarantee of $7,500, and the final pot could reach $20,000 if we reach the maximum 20 entrants. The entry fee is $1,150, and prizes go just to the first three.
There’ll be another $15 Pick 4 Jackpot tourney on Sunday. Check our home page or our Twitter feed on Saturday night for the Jackpot carryover amount. It will depend on how many participated in Saturday’s Pick 4 Jackpot tourney—and whether anyone scooped all the cash. This, like all our Pick 4 Jackpot games, will be a Pick & Pray.
The Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge has the spotlight to itself on Sunday at HorsePlayers with the day’s one and only featured tourney.
It’s a live-format, low-ratio qualifier guaranteeing at least one $10,000 BCBC entry. The winning ratio is 1-per-23 in this $500 tourney.
One programming note: All of our Sunday featured tourneys will be done in plenty of time for you to watch the entire Super Bowl. (Santa Anita has an early, 11:30 am ET post time). We can’t guarantee, however, that you won’t miss some of the compelling content on the various pre-game shows. You can thank us for that later.