This coming Sunday is Super Sunday for most. This past Sunday was Super Sunday for Evan Trommer.
Sunday offered a total of 10 featured tourneys between here and HorsePlayers. Trommer figured very prominently in nine of them (and he had a pretty good excuse in the other).
The Floridian played in nine tourneys and had two entries in eight of them. (He opted for just one in the $1,150-buy-in Big Bucks game.)
Basically, Trommer wound up having a “good” ticket and a “bad” ticket that was pretty much the same from one tourney to the next. In each of the 12 races, he used a different pick across his two entries. The entry that did better finished with a total of $80.00 that was built with 4 winners—including Major Deal ($32.40, $11.20) in the 7th at Tampa—and one place. That entry got him a $2,000 Players Championship berth.
Stephen Gravina came in second to get the other available spot in April’s $350,000 Guaranteed all-cash event here at HorseTourneys.
It was a similar story in Sunday’s Keeneland Grade One Gamble qualifier.
This time it was Edward Enborg who occupied the place spot and got a $3,500 Keeneland seat along with Trommer.
The same picks landed Trommer a $1,000 entry in this Friday’s Tampa High Rollers Contest.
Stephen McNatton will also be in Oldsmar, Fla., after completing the exacta.
In Sunday’s $7,000 Guaranteed Big Bucks tourney—the one where Trommer used just one entry—he wound up playing his “bad” ticket, but even there the results were good…really good.
There was no Major Deal here, but Trommer had Prince Abama ($12.60, $6.00) to get up and win $7,124 in a game that closed with a final purse of $10,177.
There were a couple of games in which Trommer did double damage with his two entries. One (somewhat not surprisingly) was Sunday’s NHC First Chance/Last Chance qualifier which paid out a total of seven $500 seats.
The seat earners not named Evan Trommer were Gary Johnson, Carol Trageser, Dave Cichy, Jim Templin and Ilan Cuellar.
A late addition to the Sunday schedule was our first qualifier to the June 3 Monmouth Pick Your Prize tournament. Two $2,000 entries were headed out the door in this one, and, as it turned out, they went to just one door.
Most of the above triumphs for Trommer came in Pick & Prays. Sunday’s Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge Low Ratio qualifier was a Live-format game. How would Trommer do in those circumstances? He improved his score!
This time he had both Major Deal and Prince Abama on the same ticket.
Enough about Evan Trommer’s successes. Let’s focus now on his embarrassing failures!
Actually…Trommer’s loss to Kenneth Americh in Sunday’s $20,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray wasn’t so embarrassing since he finished 4th and collected $2,082. On his end, Americh put together 3 wins and 2 places to earn $13,387 of what was a final pot of $29,750.
Like Trommer in the BCBC play-in, Americh picked both Major Deal and Prince Abama.
Let’s get back to Trommer’s defeats. Upon further review, his setback in the $165 NHC Pick & Pray…wasn’t that embarrassing either.
Trommer was already double qualified, so he was looking to up his place in the NHC Tour standings, and his second-place finish did just that. Punching their tickets to next month’s big dance, meanwhile were Howard Johnson (6 wins, 0 places) and third-place finisher Rock Tocheri (4W, 0P). Major Deal was a major deal to both of them.
We mentioned that Trommer had a pretty good excuse for not playing in one of the 10 Sunday features. It was because he wasn’t eligible for it.
Now here’s the ironic part of Sunday. In winning the Sunday NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers that was restricted to those who had yet to earn a 2023 berth, Francis Boustany (7 firsts, including the first 5, plus 1 second) put up the highest score of the day. This means that, despite all his other successes, had Trommer been eligible to play in this one, he would have lost. So the contest gods were clearly keeping Trommer on the right path all day.
By our highly unofficial count, Trommer invested $3,984 in entry fees on Sunday and wound up with cash and seats worth a total of $30,706. He finished first in seven of the nine tourneys he entered, and got a second grand prize in two of those victories. In the two tourneys he lost, he got $2,000 in one and a good amount of NHC Tour points in the other.
When all of the Sunday exploits were complete, we reached out to Roger Goodell to see if he’d be willing to present a trophy to Trommer as something of a prelude to the NFL’s own Super Sunday. Unfortunately, Goodell was unavailable. His representatives informed us that he was attending a flag football game.
It wasn’t quite “Evan Trommer level” domination, but Dr. Ron Tang got the featured-tourney week off to an impressive start on Wednesday.
Tang and first-place finisher Steven Meier were the two to come away with $2,000 seats in Wednesday’s qualifier to the middle leg of the Tourney Triple, the $350,000 Guaranteed Players Championship.
Tang also took two of the five available $500 entries in Wednesday’s NHC First Chance/Last Chance play-in.
Among Tang’s foes on NHC Eve will be Nick “48 Hrs.” Noce (3 wins, 1 place), Mark “Doctor” Detro and Dennis Tiernan.
Wednesday’s highest scorer was Frank Iemmiti.
Iemmiti came up with the day’s two priciest winners—at odds of 8-1 and 7-1—to capture our $5,000 Guaranteed tourney.
Iemmiti pocketed the winner’s share of $3,359 from what was a final overall purse of $7,465.
On Thursday, Mark Winland also found the day’s two best-priced winners.
Those two, plus 2 other winners and 3 places put Mark in “win land” in Thursday’s $6,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray.
Winland won $3,763 in a game ultimately worth a total of $8,364.
As was the case on Wednesday, Thursday’s NHC First Chance/Last Chance qualifier saw one player reel in two seats.
The twin killing was executed by Tammy Johns, who operated with surgical-like precision in finishing first and fourth. In between her two entries were Chris Podratz and Jim Sebes.
Michael “The Coach” Goodrich captured Friday’s HT Tour event, our $15,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray.
Happily for Goodrich, the game finished with a nice big pot of $24,937…which meant a nice big winner’s share of $11,221 for him. His big horse among 2 firsts and 4 seconds was Miss M M ($53.00, $13.80) in the 9th at Gulfstream.
There was a common thread between Friday’s Players Championship qualifier and the same day’s Tampa High Rollers play-in.
John Vail took the Player’s Championship qualifier on the strength of 3 wins and 2 places. Neal Thomas and Dylan Donnelly got the other $2,000 seats for running 2nd and 3rd, respectively.
In the Tampa play-in, Edward Yinger made collections in each of the first 5 races on the way to a 4-win, 2-place day that got him the top spot and a $1,000 entry for this Friday and Saturday’s on-track tournament. Here’s the common thread between this and the Players Championship game.
Filling the second- and third-place positions once again were Neal Thomas and Dylan Donnelly. So they’ll be in action this weekend in suburban Tampa as well.
Brett Wiener had one winner (Miss M M) and four runners up.
Wiener led a pack of seven winners in Friday’s NHC First Chance/Last Chance qualifier play-in. Also scoring $500 entries were Fabian “Island” Sultan, Patrick Runyan, Greg Knepper, Hubert Gaffney, Jeff Bussan and Michael Marlaire.
Friday’s highest scorer, by a goodly margin, was Douglas Schenk.
Schenk racked up a formidable 7 wins and 1 place out of 10 races to take Friday’s $75 NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers going away.
Double-qualified players came out in full force as they made their late pushes for NHC Tour positioning. The second-, third- and fourth-place finishers all fit that bill. That was good news, though, for the fifth- and sixth-place finishers Matthew Rensdell and Kris Andaur, who each came away with NHC spots for next month.
For Andaur, the good fortune continued right on into Saturday.
Andaur began inauspiciously in the richest tourney of the week, our $30,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray, which closed with a pot of $36,960. However, Andaur hit Genius Jimmy ($27.60, $10.00) at the end to close out a 2-win, 2-place performance that got Andaur the $16,632 top prize in this HT Tour event.
Ciaran Thornton captured a pair of Saturday features, including our very first qualifier for the April 15 Keeneland Grade One Gamble.
Thornton compiled 4 firsts and 2 seconds, including Genius Jimmy in the nightcap, to lead a parade of three $3,500 seat winners. The other two to scale the $90 mark took home the other two berths—Ilan Cuellar and Peter Rogers.
Thornton used the same picks to equally good effect over at HorsePlayers.
The same 4 firsts and 2 seconds got him a $10,000 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge spot in the $179 Live-format game.
Terence Channon also took two Saturday featured events.
Channon put up the second best score of the day in topping Saturday’s NHC First Chance/Last Chance Pick & Pray leaderboard. Other nabbing $500 NHC Eve seats were Michael Reynolds, Michael Marlaire, Keeneland seat earner Peter Rogers, Mark Heider, Sunday hero Evan Trommer, Nick Noce and Dave “Gambling Actuary” Nichols.
The $165 NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers was held in Live-format, and that helped Channon’s cause even further.
Here, he posted the best score of the day, a whopping $151.60, thanks to 7 wins and a place. The double-qualified Evan Trommer was second, so the other spot in this two-seater dropped down to Tim Herboth (4W, 3P), He was the game’s only other triple-figure scorer.
Scott Nelson was yet another to pick up two victories on Saturday.
His 4 firsts and 2 seconds—led by Quattroelle ($23.60, $8.80) in the 4th at Santa Anita—got him the grand prize of $9,973 in Saturday’s $10,000 Guaranteed Big Bucks Pick & Pray, which closed with $14,248 in the big kitty.
Nelson scored $1.20 higher in Saturday’s Players Championship Pick & Pray.
The two other players to top $80—Steven Meier and David Nelson—also picked up $2,000 “PC” entries. All three winners played Genius Jimmy ($27.60, $10.00) in the final contest race, the 8th at Santa Anita.
David Nelson also got himself a $1,000 entry for this weekend at Tampa bay Downs.
Here, Nelson beat all but Ron Tackett, who had the final three winners to finish with 4 firsts and 1 second on the day.
Last but not least, John Fasola got the Vegas berth in Saturday’s Low Ratio NHC play-in at HorsePlayers.
Fasola whiffed on the first 5 races, but he recorded 2 place collections (including one for a max $22.00) followed by two winners at the very end to make up for his slow beginning.
This coming week is the final one of the 2022 NHC Tour year, so expect those qualifiers to be even more hectic than usual. We’ll be back again next Monday to break all that and more down. Congratulations to all of last week’s winners and thanks to all for playing.