Another 20 featured tourneys are on the books for the weekend ahead. Nineteen of them are Pick & Prays—so you don’t necessarily have to be attached to your phones or computers during the afternoons if you don’t want to be.  

The first four of the 20 come your way on Friday.

Friday’s HT Tour game is our $15,000 Guaranteed, No Limit Pick & Pray. An upfront stake of $190 will get you in the game. (Things are really tight at the top of the HT leaderboard right now…though you obviously don’t need to be anywhere near the top of the year-long standings to have fun and win good money in this stand-alone cash game.)

We will offer a $118 Pick & Pray qualifier to the $250,000 Gtd. Flo-Cal Face-off on each day of the weekend. The Faceoff takes place here on January 20-21. Winners in these 1-per-15 qualifiers earn a $1,500 place in the exciting two-day tourney that covers the full cards at Gulfstream and Santa Anita each day. 

Also on the Friday schedule is a play-in to the Santa Anita Opening Day Challenge. One of every 15 entrants—at $118 per entry—will lock down a $1,500 spot in the day-after-Christmas contest.

At HorsePlayers, our “Old Reliable”—a $75 NHC qualifier—is the Friday highlight.

Two seats to the big dance in Vegas are guaranteed here. The winning ratio is 1-per-143, and entries in this Pick & Pray are limited to three per person. Remember—you must be a 2023 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 10 contest races on Friday are the 6th, 7th and 9th from Aqueduct; the 7th through 10th at Gulfstream; and races 7 through 9 from Tampa Bay Downs. 

Seven Pick & Prays are currently on the featured slate for Saturday.

We say “currently” because there is a good chance that a Santa Anita Opening Day Challenge game will get added sometime between now and Saturday morning, though it is not pictured on the home page as of yet.

One game this IS pictured is our richest tourney of the week, our $25,000 Guaranteed, No Limit Pick & Pray. It’s an HT Tour event, and it costs $350 to play. 

Saturday’s other cash feature is our $7,000 Guaranteed Big Bucks Pick & Pray.The entry fee here is $1,150. Total entries for this high-end game are limited to 20, with the winner getting 70 percent of the net pool, the runner up pocketing 20 percent, and the third-place contestant leaving with the remaining 10 percent. If we reach the maximum entry count of 20, the total purse will exceed $20,000.

Your first of two weekend opportunities to win a $6,500 package for the Pegasus World Cup Betting Challenge takes place on Saturday. It’s a 1-per-20 proposition with a price tag of $384.

As alluded to earlier, we’ll also be hosting another $118 qualifier on Saturday for the $250,000 Guaranteed Flo-Cal Faceoff.

It’s an extra-busy Saturday at HorsePlayers with three Pick & Pray featured tourneys.

Two of them are NHC qualifiers, including a $165 Pick & Pray with two seats certain to be awarded. The winning ratio is 1-per-65.

The other NHC game is a special Low Ratio play-in with an entry fee of $500 and a winning ratio of 1-per-21. Note that this is not a “guaranteed” game, per se. There must be at least 10 entries for this competition to go forward. Also, per NTRA rule, NHC Tour points will only be distributed if there are enough entries (e.g. 42) for two spots to be awarded.

There’s less fine print associated with Saturday’s third HorsePlayers feature—a $179 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge Pick & Pray with a winning ratio of 1-per-65 and one $10,000 seat guaranteed.

The 12 contest races for Saturday are the 6th through 9th from Aqueduct; the 6th through 9th at Tampa Bay Downs; and the 7th, 9th, 10th and 11th from Gulfstream. Closing time is slated for 2:42 pm ET.

There’s no shortage of action on Sunday with nine marquee games on tap.

One of them is the weekend’s third qualifying opportunity for the $250,000 Gtd. Flo-Cal Faceoff. 

A qualifier to the Santa Anita Opening Weekend Challenge is definitely on the agenda for Sunday. The entry fee is $118, the winning ratio is 1-per-15, and the objective is a $1,500 seat that will be playable either on-track on Dec. 26th or at Xpressbet.

For the second straight day, there will be a qualifier to the January 27 Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship. The same parameters will be in place as on Saturday—$384 buy-in, 1-per-20 winning ratio, Pick & Pray format and a $6,500 package up for grabs. 

On Sunday, we will offer a $79, 1-per-15 qualifier for the Houston Racing Festival Handicapping Contest on January 27th at Sam Houston. Winners get their $1,000 worth of entry fees/live bankroll paid up for this on-track contest that will be limited to 100 entries. Four NHC seats will be awarded…so it sounds like an excellent place to punch one’s ticket to Vegas.

Speaking of the NHC, there are two NHC play-ins on Sunday. One of them takes place here at HorseTourneys—a $165 Pick & Pray with two seats guaranteed. The winning ratio is 1-per-65.

On the cash-game front, there’s our $20,000 Gtd., No Limit Pick & Pray. It’s $250 to compete in this HT Tour skirmish. 

The lone Live-format tourney this weekend is Sunday’s other featured cash game— our $7,000 Guaranteed Big Bucks tourney. The entry fee is $1,150—and, again, payouts go only to the top three finishers on a 70-/20-/10-percent basis.

Among the two featured events at HorsePlayers on Sunday is a brand new NHC qualifier.

The NHC play-in carries a $500 entry fee, making it a Low Ratio, 1-per-21 game. The added twist is that it is just for those who have yet to nail down a 2024 seat. Because it is a restricted game, no NHC Tour points will be awarded. Also, this game requires at least 10 entrants to “go”.

There is also a Low Ratio Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifier on Sunday. It’s a $500 Pick & Pray with a winning ratio of 1-per-23, and one $10,000 seat is guaranteed.

We’ll be back in this space on Monday to recap all the featured-tourney action. Best of luck to all who play.