Things may feel a bit different this week with Saratoga and Del Mar over and the kids all back to school. But it is business as usual this weekend at HorseTourneys with 10 lucrative and fun featured games on Saturday and Sunday that will help us forget that the excitement of summer ever ended.

Our marquee tourney on Saturday is our big $50,000 guaranteed game. It has $22,500 up top for the winner and will pay down to 12th place. Entry is $495 and, as a guaranteed game, it will pay out in full regardless of how many entries we get. Overlay watchers will want to keep a sharp eye out for this one. As of this writing (Friday evening), it looks like it will be a positive expectation event for contest players.

Note that this tourney – and all our “featured” tourneys on Saturday – will have a robust slate of 14 contest races: Belmont’s 7th through 10th, Arlington’s 6th through 8th, Laurel’s 9th and 10th; and Kentucky Downs’s 6th through 10th.

We are also running direct qualifiers for three important brick-and-mortar events. Of particular note is a one-time-only qualifier for the September 17 Woodbine Mile Tourney. One full package ($3,500 Canadian entry fee/live bankroll + $750 travel) will be awarded per every 25 entries. Also on tap Saturday is a full package ($500 entry + $750 travel) qualifier to next month’s Orleans Fall Classic (one package handed out per each 15 entries) and, speaking of The Orleans, we’ll also be hosting an entry-only qualifier for the 2017 Horse Player World Series. HorseTourneys entry fees are $160 for Woodbine, $97 for the Orleans Fall Classic and $87 for the Horse Player World Series qualifier.

Last but not least on Saturday is a Round 2 feeder for Sunday’s The BIG One direct qualifier. Only four online seats remain available for the Sept. 24-25 The BIG One, so play this week and next week or forever hold your peace (until next year, at least). Our Saturday qualifier (note that this one will utilize the Pick & Pray format) is $106, with one of every five players advancing on to Sunday’s qualifier where seats will cost $478 each.

Sunday is topped by the aforementioned The BIG One direct qualifier. Two full packages (including hotel, welcome dinner and travel) are guaranteed to be awarded regardless of participation count. We’ll be backing this exciting qualifier up with qualifiers to two other high-end tourneys – the Del Mar Fall Classic (Nov. 12-13) and the Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge. The Del Mar Fall Classic tourney awards a $4,000-entry-plus-$500-travel prize per every 25 players. Entry fee is $212. The Keeneland entry fee is $160 and will offer one package ($3,000 entry plus $500 travel) per every 25 participants.

Cash game players will likely be interested in our $7,500 Guaranteed tourney, which costs $190, pays down to fifth place and has a first prize of $3,750…and also our $1,500 Guaranteed exacta box tourney which, for an entry of just $54, allows you to pick a three-horse exacta box in each race with the winner based on the highest aggregate $1 exacta payoffs from the contest races. The exacta box tourney (these are always a lot of fun) pays down to fifth and has $600 for the winner.

Contest races for our featured tourneys on Sunday are: Belmont’s 6th through 9th, Woodbine’s 6th through 8th and Kentucky Downs’s 5th through 9th (12 races in all).

These are just the highlights of the upcoming weekend. Check our complete menu of contests each day for the full array of offerings (including lots of fun Kentucky Downs tourneys this weekend). You are sure to find something that suits your preferred format and budget.

May you have a fun and profitable weekend at HorseTourneys. Good luck!

There are all kinds of ways to win handicapping tourneys. You can win them by striking early and opening up a big lead. You can win them by closing with a fury. And sometimes you can win them by not even doing particularly well. All such methods were on display over Labor Day Weekend at HorseTourneys.

Our feature event on Saturday, September 3 saw Jobby Blevins get absolutely nothing from his last five plays. Yet a hot start secured him the victory (worth $6,250) in our $12,500 Guaranteed game. Tim Downs’s key to success in our $1,500 Guaranteed exacta box game was the big hit. His $1 exacta payoff of $176.40 in the 9th at Kentucky Downs did the preponderance of the damage in his victory, which earned him $600.

And our Saturday Horse Player World Series entry game — won by David Snyder, Lucas Van Zandt and Richard Ilharreguy — was won in two distinctly different ways. Snyder and Van Zandt followed the typical custom of the day…which was to use cap horse Silver Ride in Saratoga’s 8th race (the first race of the tourney). Ilharreguy missed Silver Ride but was able to chip away at that setback with a wide array of other lower-priced winners. It shows yet again that all is not lost when a longshot wins in a contest and you don’t have it.

Our Sunday featured event saw Bill Wilbur, Richard Grose and Dave Durkin become the latest to “Get Qualified” to the NHC. Grose, some may recall, flirted with NHC glory in January 2013 when he led after Day 1 (back when it was still just a two-day championship). The Wentzville, Mo., native ultimately wound up 4th in the big dance.

David Sullivan was the big winner in Sunday’s $7,500 Guaranteed game — a triumph worth $3,750. In our Orleans Fall Classic competition, Joe Jarvie and Steven Meier were the clearcut winners, posting scores a good $30 above the rest of the field.

On Monday, a big day for Pick & Prays, Sean Nolan demonstrated the power of multi-tabling.

He was able to use the same set of good selections to win our Del Mar Fall Classic qualifier and also win a seat (along with Mike Yurczyk, George Chute and Ed Reed) to next Saturday’s $50,000 Guaranteed tourney. The $50,000 feeder was an oddly low scoring affair with Chute and Reed finishing “in the money” despite registering scores of less than $48 — a less-than-flat-bet-profit result). As they say in baseball, those bloopers that fall in make up for the line drives that get caught.

Paul Kimes and Jason Hill were our latest two qualifiers to The BIG One. Be aware that only four online seats remain available to the Sept. 24-25 event at Laurel. Your next chance to win comes on Sunday.

John Spignesi turned in a Zenyatta-like (Silky Sullivan-like?) performance in Monday’s Horse Player World Series entry-only qualifier. He cashed in six of the last seven tourney races to leap frog the competition. In other top Labor Day tourneys, Dave Picarello won $2,500 in our $5,000 Guaranteed game. And David Johnson, Stephen Diaz and Jonathan Burns were the three winners of full packages in our popular Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge Direct Qualifier.

Once again, HorseTourneys players demonstrate that there are many different ways to skin a cat. Whether you are playing in our $50,000 Guaranteed game, our penultimate The BIG One qualifier, our one-time-only Woodbine Mile qualifier or one of the many other top games on this week’s slate, we wish you good luck and a good week.

If you’re a contest player and find yourself bored this weekend, it’s your own fault.

It’s almost as though we have two weekends worth of action crammed into one here at HorseTourneys. Things start to get rolling in earnest on Friday with a Guaranteed $5,000 Pick & Pray tourney for $185 that pays down to fourth place with $2,500 up top for the winner.

Saturday checks in with three big tourneys, a couple of medium-size games, plus one little one that we think is kind of nice.

We’ll have a $12,500 Guaranteed game that day with a $195 entry fee and $6,250 to the victor. It pays down to sixth position and is also a Pick & Pray, as are the majority of our games this weekend. There will also be one of our popular $1,500 Guaranteed exacta box games for just $54. This one is a live event that pays down to fifth with the winner receiving $600. There is also an entry-only Horse Player World Series direct qualifier Pick & Pray for $87 with one out of 20 punching a ticket to the Orleans. There’s an $850 Guaranteed Pick & Pray plus a fun, Guaranteed $250 Survivor (hit the board or die!) game. Last but not least, if any of you out there are rookies, we have a free tournament on Saturday for those whose accounts are 30-days-old or younger. You won’t get rich off this one. The prize pot is $25. But it’s a great way to get a feel for the rhythms of tournament play, learn the functionality of the site and just have some fun with zero risk. Check it out!

Our marquee event on Sunday, of course, is our NHC direct qualifier, which carries an entry fee of $160. We will be awarding a minimum of three NHC packages guaranteed. If participation in this live-format tourney pokes up over the 280 mark, we will toss in a fourth package to the prize pool. We’ll also be offering packages, one for every 15 entries, to next month’s Orleans Fall Classic. Entry to this Pick & Pray event is $97. Winners get a $500 Orleans entry plus $750 in travel. Cash game players haven’t been forgotten on Sunday. We’ll be hosting a $7,500 Guaranteed game with $3,750 to first and payments down to fifth. Entry is $190. Night owls will enjoy our $1,000 Los Alamitos Quarter Horse Guaranteed event. Last but not least, we’ll be running a $106 feeder to Labor Day’s The BIG One direct qualifier where it would cost you $478 to play. We’re down to less than two handfuls of online spots left for the Sept. 24-25 event at Laurel. So if you’re thinking BIG, there is no time to waste.

On Labor Day, our action — along with perhaps your barbecue grill — heats up further.

Closing day at Saratoga will undoubtedly be a prominent part of our aforementioned The BIG One direct qualifier. Entry is $478 and we will be awarding two packages (including hotel AND travel) no matter how many enter. We also have direct qualifying packages on tap for two more high-end, live-bankroll contests: the Oct. 16 Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge (our winners get a $3,000 entry plus $500 in travel…one per 25 entries) and the Nov. 12-13 Del Mar Fall Classic ($4,000 entry plus $500 travel, also one package per 25 players). For cash game specialists, there’s a $5,000 Guaranteed game ($185 to play) that pays to fourth with $2,500 to the winner. And also an important Round 2 feeder to our big $50,000 Guaranteed game on Sept. 10. One of every five entrants will advance to next week’s grand, $50K finale. Then to round things out on what sadly is the last major Monday national holiday of the year, we’re tossing in a second Horse Player World Series entry-only qualifier of the weekend. Like Saturday’s event, this one will cost $87 to play and offer one HPWS entry per each 20 entries.

May your labor be minimal this weekend and your tourney luck plentiful. From all of us at HorseTourneys, please enjoy a safe and happy Labor Day weekend.