Arguably the two most important, most prestigious handicapping tournaments in the month of April are the $350,000 Guaranteed Players Championship here at HorseTourneys on April 6-7 and the Keeneland Grade One Gamble the following weekend at Keeneland Race Course and Xpressbet. Starting this Saturday, you can earn a spot in both here at HorseTourneys.

Of perhaps more pressing concern is the Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship. It takes place on Saturday, and your final chance to earn a $6,500 package for it is one of five featured tourneys on our Friday schedule.

Speak now or forever hold your Pegasus. Friday’s final PWCBC qualifier is a $384 Pick & Pray with a winning ratio of 1-per-20. Winners get a $6,000 entry for the next day plus a $500 winner’s bonus.

On the menu each day of the upcoming weekend are qualifiers to the Tampa Bay Downs Last Chance/First Opportunity Contest Presented by HorseTourneys on February 16-17 and the NHC Last Chance/First Chance tournament in Vegas on NHC Eve (March 14).

The Tampa test is a 1-per-15 Pick & Pray offering a $1,000 entry to the on-track contest in Oldsmar, Fla. The buy-in is $79.

An upfront stake of $59 will get you into the NHC Last Chance/First Chance play-in. One of every 10 will succeed—and get a $500 entry for March 14 at Horseshoe Las Vegas.

The HT Tour event of the day is Friday’s $15,000 Guaranteed No Limit Pick & Pray. It’s $190 to play.

You can probably guess what the featured tourney is at HorsePlayers on Friday.

Yep, it’s a $75 NHC qualifier with two seats certain. The winning ratio works out to 1-per-143.

The 10 featured-tourney contest races on Friday are the 7th through 10th at Gulfstream, races 7 and 9 at Aqueduct; and the 3rd through 6th from Santa Anita.

Saturday is Pegasus World Cup Day, and the final six stakes on that card will serve as the foundation for eight featured tourneys, including the earlier-mentioned first qualifiers to the Players Championship and the Keeneland Grade One Gamble. 

The second leg of the 2024 HorseTourneys Grand Slam, the April 6-7 Players Championship will have a guaranteed purse of $350,000 and require contestants to make 15 plays each day from a bank of 30 races each day. Seats to the Players Championship will cost $2,000 each, but you can get one on Saturday if you win our $156, 1-per-15 Live-format qualifier.

Also in Live format is Saturday’s first-chance play-in to the April 13 Keeneland Grade One Gamble. Seats to the Gamble will set you back $3,500 on contest day…or $207 if you succeed in Saturday’s 1-per-20 play-in.

As noted higher up, we’ll again have qualifiers on Saturday for both the Tampa Bay Downs Last Chance/First Opportunity Contest and the NHC Last Chance/First Chance tournament. The price points and winning ratios will all be the same here as on Friday, but these Saturday games will be run in Live Format rather than as Pick & Prays.

For cash-game enthusiasts, there’s Saturday’s $25,000 Guaranteed, No Limit game. It’s an HT Tour battle, carrying a price tag of $350/entry. The format will be Live.

Saturday’s lone Pick & Pray is our $7,000 Guaranteed Big Bucks tourney. The cost of to play in this one is $1,150. No more than 20 entries will be accepted for this test, 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.

There are co-features on Saturday at HorsePlayers.

NHC aspirants can participate in a $210 play-in with two spots assured and a winning ratio of 1-per-50. The format is Live.

There’s also a Live-format, $179 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge qualifier with a winning ratio of 1-per-65 and one $10,000 seat guaranteed.

The 12 contest races that will determine the outcome of Saturday’s featured events are the 8th through 13th (all graded stakes) from the Pegasus World Cup Day card at Gulfstream; the 9th and 10th from the Resorts World Cup day card (just kidding) at Aqueduct; and the 6th through 9th at Santa Anita. Closing time is slated for 2:41 pm ET.

Sunday has our most crowded featured-tourney schedule with a total of 10 marquee games.

The day’s top cash game is Sunday’s $20,000 Gtd. No Limit tourney. The entry fee for this HT Tour event is $250, and the format is Live.

Also doling out the cash will be Sunday’s $7,000 Gtd. Big Bucks tourney. It’s a Live-format game on Sundays with the same $1,150 ticket price as on Saturday. The top three will again get paid on a 70/20/10-percent basis.

Once again, there are Live-format qualifiers in place for the Players Championship, the Keeneland Grade One Gamble, the Tampa Bay Downs Last Chance/First Opportunity contest and the NHC Last Chance/First Chance tournament.

There’s a brand new qualifier on Sunday—one for the Hawthorne OTBs NHC tournaments on February 17-18. The entry fee is $71 and one in 10 participants will earn $600 worth of entry fees (enough to cover you on both days in Chicagoland). 

There are two NHC qualifiers on Sunday. The one here at HorseTourneys is a “regular,” $165 play-in with two spots guaranteed to be headed out the door. The format is Live.

The other NHC qualifier is one of two features on the Sunday agenda at HorsePlayers.

It’s a $210, Live-format play-in restricted to those who have yet to nail down a March 2024 NHC seat. The winning ratio is 1-per-50, and one spot is guaranteed. Because this is a restricted competition, no NHC Tour points will be handed out in this get-together.

The other Sunday feature at HorsePlayers is a Live-format, $500, Low Ratio qualifier to the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge. One spot is guaranteed, and the winning ratio works out to 1-per-23.

Good luck to all this weekend…and especially to the HorseTourneys qualifiers who will be competing on Saturday in the Pegasus World Cup Betting Challenge and/or the Houston Racing Festival Handicapping Contest at Sam Houston. May the horses follow the script for you.