Brian “BC” Chenvert also seems to heat up around this time of year, and the Minnesotan was right on time last Saturday.

It wouldn’t truly be a big day for Chenvert around here if a Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge seat wasn’t somehow involved. Thanks in large part to Mad House ($49.00, $16.20) in race 12 on the Pennsylvania Derby program at Parx, Chenvert (3 firsts, 4 seconds) topped the leaderboard in what turned out to be a two-seat BCBC qualifier at HorsePlayers. The other berth in this $179 buy-in affair was Jim Lisowsky, whose biggest hit among 2 wins and 3 places came at the very end with Keep Dancin Nick ($78.80, $12.00) in the 7th at Los Alamitos.

Chenvert didn’t use the exact same picks across all of his Saturday entries, but he was 100% loyal to Canterbury Park shipper Mad House in that Gallant Bob Stakes at Parx.

Six collections, including three winners, got Chenvert the top spot—and the $2,000 seat that went with it—in Saturday’s BC Pick & Pray Tourney qualifier.

Chenvert made it a three-bagger by also leading the way in Saturday’s Pick & Pray Classic play-in.

Kevin Engelhard (3 wins, 2 places) also thought Mad House was a perfectly sane selection, and he came away with the other available $1,500 entry for his second-place finish.

A couple of very late scratches in the final contest race played a big role in the outcome of two featured tourneys on Wednesday.

When both the 5 horse and the 7 horse made it out onto the track but not successfully out of the starting gate prior to the 8th at Mountaineer, it threw the late-night tourney finale into a bit of turmoil. The scratch of the 5 (after busting through the starting gate and running off) moved Terry Jerge to his alternate selection, #3 Offutt Cole. It was a fortuitous development for Jerge. Offutt Cole won and returned $41.40 to win and $9.00 to place. That brought Jerge the $3,500 entry in Wednesday night’s Keeneland Fall BCBC-NHC Challenge qualifier.

It was a similar situation for Steve Arrison.

Arrison had the 7 horse, O Romeo, in the West Virginia nightcap. That one dumped his rider in the post parade and ran around for a very long time before being scratched. (It looked like the horse wasn’t so much corralled as just exhausted—from running around by himself for so long. Mountaineer needs some faster ponies for their outriders!) Anyway…Arrison (2 wins, 2 places) also got moved onto backup pick Offutt Cole, and that shot him to the top in Wednesday’s qualifier to this Saturday’s Autumn Handicapping Challenge at Laurel/Xpressbet. Stephen McNatton (2W, 3P) finished a close second, and he received the other available $500 seat. McNatton’s top return came with Vintage Sparkle ($20.80, $8.00) in race 6 at Mountaineer.

Andy McGarry also scored nicely with Vintage Sparkle.

McGarry (6 firsts, 2 seconds) posted the top score of the day ($100.60) in taking Wednesday.s $5,000 Guaranteed cash tourney. McGarry banked $2,500 in a game that went off with a takeout to players of 6.9%.

Thursday’s cash-game hero was David Becker, who picked 6 winners.

The best of Becker’s half dozen came at the end. He nailed Bijou Baby ($29.20, $9.60) in the 7th at Horseshoe Indianapolis. Becker earned $3,608 in Thursday’s $6,000 Gtd. Pick & Pray, which closed with a final purse of $8,018.

Our 2021 Flo-Cal Faceoff champion Alan Levitt had a doubly nice Thursday.

The erudite Levitt had Blossoming Erudite ($35.62, $13.42) in the 7th at BAQ and earned the distinction of being the first-ever winner of a Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge “partial qualifier” at HorsePlayers. Levitt received a $5,000 half-entry to the BCBC—which he can pair with another half entry he might have won earlier this year as breakage in a regular BCBC qualifier—or a half-entry he might pick up between now and Halloween. One also has the option to pay $5,000 to turn a half-entry into a full entry (which is actually a pretty good deal for the payer).

Using the same picks, Levitt also got himself some action for this Saturday.

No half-measures for Levitt this time around! He won a fully-financed $500 seat to Saturday’s Autumn Handicapping Challenge. (Mike Ehrmantraut would approve of this one.) Levitt came in second in this two-seater, trailing only the redoubtable G.T. Nixon, who counted Bijou Baby among his 6 winners and 1 runner up.

On Friday, the final contest race again had an outsized affect on the outcome of our featured tourneys. On this day, the horse you really wanted to have was Blown Cover ($84.86, $37.68) in the 9th at BAQ. Blown Cover was one of four winners on the day for Dave “Gambling Actuary” Nichols.

Nichols captured Friday’s Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge Low Ratio Pick & Pray at HorsePlayers. Charles Welch reported home in second position, and he picked up a $5,000 partial BCBC entry. Look for Welch, perhaps, in a future BCBC partial qualifier!

The same four winners also landed Nichols a $1,500 Pick & Pray Classic berth.

Here, Nichols bested all except Raj Satyan (2 wins, 2 places), who remains very hot. Satyan had Blown Cover at the end too.

Edwin Peinado played 2 entries in Friday’s $75 NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers. Only two of his 10 picks were common to both tickets…but one of the two was Blown Cover.

Peinado filled the top two spots on the leaderboard in what was a gaudy display of handicapping acumen. Unfortunately for Peinado, NTRA rules state that a player may only earn one NHC entry in any given qualifier. So the second available Vegas package fell to third-place contestant Jeff Bussan, who had Blown Cover plus 3 other winners.

Kirk Tesar (4 wins, 2 places) and Dave Ramold (4W, 0P) both backed Blown Cover.

Blown Cover exposed Tesar and Ramold as the winners of $2,000 berths at the conclusion of Friday’s BC Pick & Pray tourney qualifier.

Darren Rudnick used Blown Cover as a late springboard to success in Friday’s HT Tour competition.

Rudnick (3 firsts, 4 seconds) reeled in the grand prize of $8,977 in Friday’s $15,000 Gtd. Pick & Pray, which closed with a final pot of $19,950.

Our 2023 The BIG One champ Brendan Fay and Peter Osella were the only two on Friday who managed to prosper without having Blown Cover in the tourney finale.

Fay (4 wins, 2 places) and Osella (5W, 1P) secured themselves the two available $500 spots in Friday’s Autumn Handicapping Challenge qualifier. The big horse for each of them was Sweet Montreal ($24.44, $8.28) in race 6 at BAQ.

Blown Cover was “Pistol” Pete Acocella’s only winner of the day on Friday.

To that cap horse, Acocella added two place collections, and he garnered the $3,500 entry in Friday’s qualifier to the October 11 Keeneland Fall BCBC-NHC Challenge.

On Saturday, Acocella added an Autumn Handicapping Challenge entry to his upcoming contest portfolio.

For the second straight day, Acocella managed to succeed despite waiting until the final contest race to record his only winner. After whiffing on the first 7 races, Acocella tallied a couple of innocuous place collections followed by a big price—Keep Dancin Nick ($78.80, $12.00) in the 7th at Los Alamitos—at the end. It all added up to a 3rd-place finish in this three-seater. Finishing ahead of Acocella were G.T. Nixon (3 wins, 3 places) and Jeff VanDrie, who, similar to Acocella, also had just one winner (and a place). The big hit for both Nixon and VanDrie came courtesy of Mad House ($49.00, $16.20) in the 12th at Parx. And for Nixon, this was the second Autumn Handicapping Challenge seat won during the week. He also snatched one on Thursday.

George Chute had a robust Saturday.

Chute laddered his way to the top of Saturday’s $25,000 Guaranteed cash game by connecting on Keep Dancin Nick at the end. His 6 wins and 2 places in this HT Tour battle were rewarded with $12,474 in a game that was ultimately worth a total of $27,720.

In Saturday’s Keeneland Fall BCBC-NHC Challenge qualifier, Chute traded in his 6 wins and 2 places for 8 winners.

Keep Dancin Nick was kept on the Chute scorecard here, and the Bay State resident earned a $3,500 seat for the popular October 11 contest.

David Brownfield may have turned in the best handicapping performance of the week in Saturday’s $165 NHC Pick & Pray qualifier here at HorseTourneys.

Brownfield smoked out both of the day’s bombs—Mad House and Keep Dancin Nick. To that dynamic duo, he added a pair of place collections en route to a final score of $118.80 and a Vegas package. Also earning a spot in the big dance next March was runner up Wes Herek, whose heaviest lifter among 4 wins and 3 places was Mad House at Parx.

Sunday was the day of a free, 4-seat NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers. It was also a day messed up to some degree by the weather-related cancellation at Gulfstream after 5 races. Three of the 12 featured-tourney races had to be nixed…as did four of the 15 in the NHC qualifier. Since, as per HorseTourneys rules, 70% or more of the originally-scheduled races took place as planned, the shows went on. 

This was very good news for Jim Darakalis (7 wins, 2 places), Fred “George” Bamberger (6W, 0P), Anthony Robb (4W, 2P) and Aaron Dobbin (4W, 3P). 

All four had Fast Market ($26.02, $9.74) in the first contest race, the 5th at BAQ. This was by far the biggest price of the day. (The next biggest win price was $10.24.) The top six finishers hit the 12-1 shot, and, in all, 166 of the 1,551 entrants got off to a fast start with Fast Market.

That 5th race at BAQ was not part of our 12-race featured schedules (reduced to 9 races after the Gulfstream card termination). As a result, scores were low and the pathways to victory were narrow, indeed. The top 9-race performance—by a fairly comfortable margin—was turned in by 2024 NHC champion Mike Gillum.

Gillum stockpiled 7 winners and 1 runner up from the 9 races to earn $10,040 in Sunday’s HT Tour battle, our $20,000 Guaranteed game, which closed with a final pot of $22,312. Gillum had the “bomb” of the day in Three Thirteen ($10.24, $5.54) in race 6 at BAQ.

Evan Trommer hit Three Thirteen.

Trommer hit the first 3 races and the final 2 to finish with 5 winners on the day. He led a group of three $500 seat winners in Sunday’s Autumn Handicapping Challenge qualifier. The others were James Cosenza (5 wins, 2 places) and Joe “Tex” Scanio (5W, 1P). Cosenza’s best return came from Noah Chance ($8.80, $4.20) in the 8th at Laurel. Scanio’s top winner paid $6.20 in the win hole.

Dylan Donnelly also had nothing bigger than a $6.20 winner, but he did have 4 winners and 3 places. 

Donnelly and the only other player to show a flat-bet profit—Earl Pratt (2W, 3P)—came away with the $2,000 berths at the conclusion of Sunday’s BC Pick & Pray Tourney qualifier. Three Thirteen was Pratt’s stable star.

That stable star paid off twice for Pratt.

He and runner up Stephan Gravina exited with the $1,500 entries in Sunday’s Pick & Pray Classic qualifier. Gravina would have had no chance if not for his selection of Noah Chance.

NHC Hall of Famer Trey Stiles (7 wins, 0 places) and Wade White (5W, 3P) both thought Noah Chance had a good chance.

Despite the existence of penny breakage, Stiles and White managed to somehow finish in a tie at $56.58 in Sunday’s Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge Low Ratio qualifier. Fortunately for them—and for the HorsePlayers stewards who were intently watching NFL football at the time—there were enough entries for two $10,000 seats to be awarded, so no serious adjudication was required.

Joe Perry scored with Noah Chance plus one other winner and five runners up.

Perry prevailed in Sunday’s Keeneland Fall BCBC-NHC Challenge qualifier.

Thanks to all of you who pulled yourself away from football long enough to partake in a game or two here last week. Featured-tourney action will…kick off…again here on Wednesday, with Santa Anita racing rejoining the fold on Friday. Good luck!