Michael Solakis loves horse racing contests. He’s good at them too. In 2022, he earned $32,000 for coming in third behind Riley Drexler in the Players Championship. Solakis went on to finish second to A.J. Benton in that year’s Tourney Triple series.

Last weekend, of course, was his greatest moment yet as a player. He collected $168,405 for his dominant victory in the 5th annual Flo-Cal Faceoff here at HorseTourneys. Still, it would be wrong to place too great an emphasis on the role horse racing has in his life.

“Playing the races is a secondary thing to family,” the 45-year-old from Toronto was quick to point out.

Those aren’t empty words. Michael and his wife Amber have two young children—a 9-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son. Toronto Temperatures were in the single digits on Saturday, which meant the always-energetic little ones had to stay inside all day. So while many contestants in the two-day, $437,417 tournament were busily reviewing past performances or scrutinizing post parades that afternoon, Michael was often doing…other things.

“I played a game of Battleship with my daughter on Saturday afternoon. My son and I…we played foam darts,” he recalled during a Tuesday night conversation held sufficiently late so as to ensure that his kids would be in bed.

Then there’s Michael’s “other” family. He teaches English to 10th- and 12th-grade high school students. It’s a job that requires many things, including patience. Maybe it’s that background that helped Michael not get flustered when, at about 2:00 pm on Day 1 of the Flo-Cal Faceoff, his internet service went down for the day.

“I had to use my phone to enter picks and watch races…I was on the small screen,” he chuckled. “I played the rest of the day that way. It was 8 or 9 p.m. before the internet came back on.”

Solakis gives high marks to the HorseTourneys mobile site for how easy it is to use. On Saturday, he was getting good grades, himself, after four double-digit winners from the first 12 contest races had landed him in second place among the 331 Flo-Cal entrants.

Then, in race 10 at Gulfstream, it was 42-1 longshot Ticking that shot Solakis to the head of the class for good.

“I didn’t look at him and say ‘He IS going to win.’ I looked at him and said, ‘He COULD win.’ He was second off a layoff and his trainer kept him at the same level, which I took to mean that the trainer might have expected a better race last time, or that something had gone wrong. I was close to getting off him when I saw the odds were so high. The doubts were creeping in and, since I was up there in the standings, I considered just plugging away, but instead I wound up sticking with him, and I’m sure glad I did.”

Two subsequent winners gave Solakis a nice $42.20 lead going into the second and final day of competition. To him, though, the lead didn’t feel safe.

“It seemed like there were a lot of big fields for a Sunday. I expected to see more prices than there were.”

Indeed, most of Sunday’s winners went off at low odds, and with seven contest races remaining, Solakis still had a lead of $36.60. 

One race later, in the 10th at Gulfstream, he came up with what he considered his most important Sunday winner, Joyful Lass, though it wasn’t just because of the $16.00-to-win and $7.80-to-place payoffs.

“Mark Stillmock had that one too,” Solakis said, referring to the eventual 3rd-place finisher. “I had my eye on Stillmock the whole second day. He’s a bold player. It seemed like everyone up there at the top — like Tim Yohler and others — were such good players, but Stillmock has been at the top of a lot of leaderboards lately, and every race I said to myself, ‘I hope he’s got the same pick as me.’ I was originally on the Chad Brown horse in that race, but he had been on a cold streak and when his horse’s odds drifted up late, I switched to Joyful Lass. Things would have really tightened up if I didn’t have her.”

At that point, Solakis realized it was time for five final races from Santa Anita — and his son’s indoor baseball practice. A lot of money was on the line, but off to his son’s practice Michael went—his phone in his pocket, of course.

“I thought briefly about staying home,” he admitted, “but I was feeling a bit of pressure and thought it would be a good thing to keep my mind occupied.”

As afternoon turned to evening, Michael found himself going back and forth between the indoor dome where practice was being held and his car out in the parking lot — where phone reception was significantly better.

Going into the final race, Solakis still had a $34.20 lead, and he suddenly found himself in an ideal scenario. Six of the seven horses in the 8th at Santa Anita had odds too low for anyone to catch Solakis with, and so he could simply play the other one—33-1 Vincero Grande.

“That was purely a 100% protection play,” he laughed, referring to Vincero Grande, who wound up finishing second.

“When I put that pick in, a couple of the other horses were hovering close to the danger zone—especially at Santa Anita—where the odds can change drastically, but finally I told myself, ‘You can’t be playing ghosts here. You can only play based on the odds that are in front of you.’ So that’s what I did.”

When it was over, Solakis wasn’t feeling elation so much as just…exhaustion.

“It had been a busy weekend. I wasn’t jumping for joy…it was more a feeling of calm happiness. The cell service was so bad at the practice dome that I couldn’t tell my wife until my son and I got home. She was excited…and was surprised by my understated reaction. She said I should put aside my fatigue and be excited too!”

Clearly family played a big, if impromptu, role in Michael Solakis’s six-figure weekend. For the past five years, Michael has primarily been a HorseTourneys cash game player, starting out at the $12 level and working his way up as his results improved. He first became interested in the sport, however, as a teenager after tagging along with his father Larry on trips to Woodbine. A few years ago, Michael sort of returned the favor by opening his father’s eyes to contest play.

Larry knew Michael was in the Flo-Cal Faceoff and each morning of the event, the two spoke on the phone to discuss how they thought the races shaped up.

“We talked general strategy ahead of time, but he always goes his way, and I always go mine,” Michael said. “No one ever wants to talk someone off a winner.” 

Turns out the elder Solakis knows what he’s doing too. He won $1,968 for coming in 22nd. Eight of their 38 selections matched as did two of their winners. Unfortunately for Larry, Ticking was not one of those matches.

“He called me at the end of each day to congratulate me,” Michael said. “Though on Sunday, he was a little disappointed in himself. He thought he had a few winners that he let get away. He thought he could have finished closer to me.”

That’s a question that will have to be settled at the next Solakis family get-together…or perhaps at the Players Championship in April. 

For now, there are students to teach…and children to put to bed.