As Belmont’s Spring/Summer meet draws to a close and Delaware Park gets ready for its signature day, HorseTourney stands ready to try and make a fun weekend that much more engaging with a plentiful variety of cash games and important qualifying events
As usual, the weekend—as we see it at least—gets started on Friday.
Weekends around here always get off to a fast start thanks to Friday’s $15,000 Guaranteed No-Limit Pick & Pray. You can be a part of this one for $190.
We’ll offer four qualifiers this weekend to the $300,000 Guaranteed Spa & Surf Showdown here on August 14-15. Friday’s play-in is a $147 Pick & Pray with a winning ratio of 1-in-20. Winners grab a $2,500 entry into the third and final leg of the 2021 Tourney Triple series, which, as a bonus, offers sought-after tournament seats to the top performers across the three events (Flo-Cal Faceoff, Players Championship, Spa & Surf Showdown). If you finished in the top 100 in the first two legs, it means you earned points that could mean a seat to the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge, the Pegasus or The BIG One—depending on how you perform on August 14-15.
Once again, we’ll have a qualifier a day this weekend to the NHC First Chance/Last Chance tournament at Bally’s on August 26. One of every 10 entrants—at $59 per entry—will get a $500 place in the annual NHC Eve competition. Up for grabs on the 26th of next month will be cash plus a 2021 NHC seat for the following day…or, if you’re already double-qualified for 2021, a berth for 2022 instead.
There will also be a Friday Pick & Pray qualifier to the Monmouth Park Haskell Challenge. For a $79 entry fee, you get a 1-in-15 chance to pick up a $1,000 entry for the July 17th event, which can be played at Monmouth or online at Xpressbet/4NJBets.
The NHC and the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge again share the Friday stage at HorsePlayers.
Friday’s $75 NHC Pick & Pray offers two guaranteed seats plus NHC Tour Points if you finish in the top 10 percent of the field. The winning ratio is 1-per-143. Remember—you must be a 2021 NHC Tour member, prior to the start of the contest, in order to be eligible for an NHC package in this or any other NHC qualifier. If you’re not a member, you can become one quickly and easily at NTRA.com for a $50 membership fee.
The other Friday feature at HorsePlayers is a $500 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge Low Ratio Pick & Pray. At least one $10,000 BCBC entry is guaranteed to be awarded.
Contest races for the Friday featured events are the 6th through 9th from Belmont; the 7th and 8th at Pimlico; the 8th and 9th from Gulfstream; and the 8th and 9th at Lone Star Park—10 races in all.
More cash and tournament seats will be headed out the door via eight marquee tourneys on Saturday.
The second qualifiers of the weekend to the Spa & Surf Showdown and the Bally’s NHC First Chance/Last Chance tournament are slated for Saturday. Both are Pick & Prays. The qualifier to the $300,000 Guaranteed Spa & Surf Showdown costs $147 and carries a 1-per-20 winning ratio, while the Bally’s play-in will requires an up-front investment of $59.
There’s also a Pick & Pray qualifier to the Monmouth Park Haskell Challenge. Again the competitors in this one will be risking $79 in search of a $1,000 seat on July 17th,
Saturday is your one chance of the weekend to snatch a $500 entry to the brand new Exacta Extravaganza ($50,000 Guaranteed) here on September 11-12. This qualifier will be run in Live, Exacta Box format—just like the Exacta Extravaganza, itself. Winners of this three-horse-box, 1-per-10 play-in, will be making exacta box picks on the full cards from Kentucky Downs and Woodbine come the second weekend of September.
On the cash-game side of the street, Saturday’s $25,000 Guaranteed, No Limit Pick & Pray is the richest game of the weekend. It has a buy-in of $260.
For really high rollers, there’s our “up-to-$20,000” Big Bucks game. (The Saturday version of this is always run as a Pick & Pray.) The purse here is guaranteed to be at least $10,000. Entries—at $1,150 each—are limited to 20 (unless we get a late arrival or two from last-minute Saturday feeders…in which case the pot will exceed $20,000). Payouts go just to the top three finishers with the winner collecting 70 percent of the net pool, the runner up getting 20 percent, and the third-place finisher picking up the remaining 10 percent.
The carryover for Saturday’s $15 Pick 4 Jackpot tourney is up to $9,146. In our Pick 4 Jackpot games (always run as Pick & Prays), going four-for-four means you win or share the Jackpot. (You don’t have to have the only perfect ticket.) Meanwhile, 70% of the daily 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 tourneys are limited to three per person.
Saturday’s Pick 4 Jackpot races are the 6th, 8th and 11th from the Stars and Stripes Day card at Belmont and race 7 on the Delaware Handicap Day card at Delaware Park.
The Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge is the sole featured focus on Saturday at HorsePlayers.
It’s a $179 Live-format qualifier. At least one $10,000 BCBC entry is guaranteed to be awarded, and the winning ratio is 1-per-65.
The 12 contest races for Saturday are the 5th through 9th (including three stakes, two of them graded) from Delaware Park; the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 11th (including three graded stakes) at Belmont; and races 11 and 12 (one stake here) from Gulfstream.
As is the norm, the busiest day of the weekend is Sunday.
Everything at HorseTourneys on Sunday is a Pick & Pray except for our Big Bucks game which is customarily run in Live Format. It’s an up-to-$20,000 tourney with $7,500 Guaranteed and an entry fee of $1,150. Entries are limited to 20, and payouts go just to the top three finishers.
For a more modest entry fee of $195, there’s Sunday’s $20,000 Guaranteed, No Limit Pick & Pray.
Our other Sunday featured cash tourney is the $15 Pick 4 Jackpot tourney (always a Pick & Pray). The jackpot amount will depend on how many took part in the Saturday Pick 4 Jackpot tourney—and whether anyone hit it. Check our website or our Twitter feed on Saturday night for updates.
Perhaps the most popular qualifier on Sunday will be the NHC play-in taking place here this week. It’s a “regular,” $165 Pick & Pray with two 2022 Vegas berths guaranteed.
Carrying an entry fee of $236 is our Del Mar Summer Challenge Pick & Pray. Winners earn a $4,000 entry for the live-bankroll, on-track tournament on July 31-August 1 at the beautiful racing venue where the surf meets the turf.
Also up for grabs on Sunday is a spot in the Canterbury Big 10 BCBC Handicapping Contest on Thursday, September 16. A $177 entry fee purchases you a 1-per-20 chance at earning a $3,000 seat for the onsite/Xpressbet contest that offers cash, 10 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge entries and two NHC spots.
We again offer two Spa & Surf Showdown qualifiers this Sunday. One is a “regular” $147 Pick & Pray with a winning ratio of 1-in-20. The other is a 1-per-8, $368 Pick & Pray. The grand prize in each case is a $2,500 berth to the $300,000 Guaranteed Showdown here on August 14-15.
Another Sunday staple is our weekly guaranteed qualifier to The BIG One, which will be contested here on September 18-19. The field for The BIG One will be no more than 57 (each playing just one entry), and there will be plenty of cash on the line plus 10 seats to the winners’ choice of the BCBC, NHC or Pegasus World Cup. Sunday’s qualifier guarantees one winner (who also gets a $500 bonus), and it carries an entry fee of $395. No more than 27 entries will be accepted in this play-in.
We’ll take another crack this Sunday at filling a qualifier to the Club Hawthorne OTB contests on July 17-18. These Chicagoland tournaments are run as two single-day competitions, and winners of our 1-per-10, $94 play-in get rewarded with $800 in entry fees—enough for both days.
Sunday offers the third weekend $59 qualifiers to the NHC First Chance/Last Chance tournament at Bally’s. It’s a Pick & Pray.
The same price will get you a 1-in-10 chance at a $500 entry to the Colonial Downs Handicapping Challenge, which takes place on Monday, July 26th. The Colonial Challenge can be played online at Xpressbet on the 26th.
With the NHC qualifier taking place at HorseTourneys, the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge rules the roost at HorsePlayers on Sunday
It’s a 1-per-23, guaranteed, Low Ratio, Live-Format qualifier with an entry fee of $500. At least one player will take home a $10,000 BCBC entry when all is said and done.
As for this Weekend Preview…it is now said and done. Good luck to all—especially the HorseTourneys qualifiers competing at Lone Star on Saturday.