Great contest performances can occur anyplace, anytime. What I believe to be one of the year’s best came from Tara Cochran in our $7,500 Guaranteed tourney on Sunday.

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There are several new additions to the upcoming weekend’s lineup. Let’s take a look in chronological order, starting with Friday.

We will again host a $5,000 Guaranteed game with $2,500 to the winner and prizes down to fourth. Entry is $185. Contest races will be the 7th through 10th at Aqueduct; the 8^th and 9th at Tampa and the 5^th through 8th at Fair Grounds – 10 races in all.

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It was an exciting three days here at HorseTourneys with some closing weekend stakes at Del Mar helping to decide a number of the featured competitions on Saturday and Sunday.

Our $5,000 Guaranteed game on Friday went to David Sullivan who prevailed over Brisnet’s Ed DeRosa. The runner-up finish was hardly a disappointment for DeRosa, who has been playing the races enthusiastically for most of his life but only began playing tourneys a year or two ago.

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It’s incredible how robust the week in, week out tournament schedule has become. For every brick-and-mortar grand finale that takes place, another one seems to emerge on the horizon. And with it comes opportunities to qualify online, of course.

This weekend’s “new” addition to the qualifier rotation in the NHC “Last Chance” tournament to be held on NHC eve, Thursday, January 26, at Treasure Island. Our first of several qualifiers for that event will be held this Sunday. But before we take a look forward to the weekend ahead, let’s take a quick look back to yesterday.

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Due to popular demand, we have raised the stakes on our Wednesday featured contest to $2,500 Guaranteed. (As with all guaranteed events, we will pay full prizes regardless of how many – or few – sign up.)

The entry fee is $79 with entries capped at 35. Prizes will be paid down to fifth place, with the winner earning $900. We also have feeders leading into the Wednesday $2,500 game.

Also be aware that direct qualifiers will start this Sunday for the NHC Last Chance Tournament to be held at Treasure Island in Las Vegas on January 26, 2017.

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It was an exciting holiday weekend at HorseTourneys that culminated with our final NHC qualifier of 2016 – a blockbuster 500-entry, seven-seat tourney.

But Saturday was big too.

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Congratulations to all!

Courtesy of Hawthorne Race Course, here are the results from each day of the Hawthorne Fall NHC Super Qualifier, held this past Friday and Saturday. The top four finishers each day receive NHC berths (unless the player is already double-qualified).

Our Weekend Preview comes at you early this week because, well, so does the weekend. But we think we’re saving the best tourney for the last day.

We have two special games slated for Turkey Day closing at 2:50 pm ET.

If you prefer to stuff your turkey with cash rather than seasoned bread crumbs, there’s our $5,000 Guaranteed tourney, a Pick & Pray, with $2,500 to the winner and prizes down to 4th place. Entry fee is $185, and contest races will be Aqueduct’s 7th through 9th; Churchill’s 9th through 12th; Del Mar’s 5th through 7th; and the 7th and 10th from Fair Grounds – 12 races in all.

Utilizing the same 12 races, we will also host a special holiday edition of our Horse Player World Series entry-only qualifier with one in 20 winning a $1,500 entry for the 2017 event next spring. This, too, is a Pick & Pray with entries costing $87.

There will also be a bountiful table of single-track and multi-track cash games and feeders on Thanksgiving. So fill your plate as many times as you wish.

And regardless of heavily you indulge on Thanksgiving, there will be plenty of tasty leftovers the next day. Should you win, Friday will be anything but Black.

Our Featured weekend schedule resumes in earnest on Saturday – one of the great betting days of the year with the Cigar Mile and Remsen at Aqueduct, the Golden Rod and Kentucky Jockey Club at Churchill, plus excellent cards at Del Mar (two graded turf stakes races) and elsewhere.

Our two marquee games on Saturday are a $25,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray with $12,500 up top and prizes to 8th place for a buy-in of $260 — and a full-package Horse Player World Series Pick & Pray for $116 with one in 25 winning a $1,500 HPWS entry, four nights’ accommodations at The Orleans, plus $500 for travel.

Then, on Sunday, the holiday weekend closes with a bang.

Sunday is the day of 2016’s final NHC qualifier at HorseTourneys. And what a qualifier it is. For the usual $160 entry fee, we are guaranteeing five packages (including accommodations at Treasure Island plus $1,000 travel) and if we get enough players, we will award as many as 10 packages. Unlike most of this weekend’s tourneys, this one will be a Live-format contest.

We’ll also be hosting our first qualifier of the year for the popular Surfside tourneys on December 30-31. One in 20 contestants will win $1,180 in entry fees (sufficient for both days) plus $500 in travel. Cost to enter this Pick & Pray qualifier is just $98.

There’s also our customary Sunday Horse Player World Series entry-only qualifier for $87, with one in 20 emerging victorious.

And for cash gamers, there is a $7,500 Guaranteed Pick & Pray paying down to 5th, including $3,750 to the winner – and our fun $1,500-Guaranteed three-horse Exacta Box game with the victor receiving $600. This one, like all our Exacta Box tourneys, will operate with a Live format.

As always, you may qualify to virtually any of the above tourneys through one of our low-cost feeders between now and the final event.

Lastly, we wish good luck to our five HorseTourneys qualifiers playing at Hawthorne this weekend and the 30 players we have sent to TwinSpires for their Online Championships on Saturday.

Wherever you’ll be this weekend – and whomever you’re spending it with – we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. We here at HorseTourneys are thankful for YOU!

We are only permitted to offer 2017 NHC Qualifiers through the end of November 2016. So it made things even a little more chaotic than normal when we were forced to scrap our next-to-last NHC qualifier last Sunday due to racing cancellations at Aqueduct and Woodbine. In case you haven’t already learned of new details surrounding our final NHC qualifier of the year this Sunday, November 27, I will go over them here.

The November 27 qualifier will now be run as a Live-format event, matching the format of the aborted November 27 qualifier.

The November 27 qualifier had originally been slated to guarantee two NHC packages and award up to four, based on participation. However, with the gracious consent of the NTRA, we are pleased to report that the November 27 NHC qualifier will now guarantee FIVE packages, and award up to TEN (one per 70 entries) should we reach 700 entries.

Entries in our ill-fated November 20 NHC qualifier were automatically transferred to our November 27 qualifier. If, for any reason, a player does not wish to participate on November 27, he or she may obtain a full refund of the November 20 $160 entry fee through a simple two-step process:

1) Go to the BUY ENTRIES section of our Web site and cancel the NHC entry (or entries) desired. This will refund 90% of the entry to fee to your account.

2) Email us at support@horsetourneys.com and request a refund of the cancel fees (i.e. the other 10%). A customer support representative will address your request promptly.

The November 20 cancellation was unfortunate. But, knock on wood, we think it may lead to an extraordinarily exciting finale to the HorseTourneys NHC qualifying year. Here’s how entries look so far for Saturday:

In closing, here are a few words (three, to be exact) about tourney cancellations.

We hate them.

As much or more than you do.

We hate them in part because we can’t stand inconveniencing our players. And also because we lose money on them after staff and operational costs are factored in.

But we’d rather lose money in the short-term than have even one player question the fairness of a cancellation decision. This why we have our cancellation policy clearly spelled out in the “Rules” section of our Web site:

We believe that transparency is extremely important. The worst-case scenario for us would be for players to think that a decision was arbitrary…or made because “they just want their money”…or, perhaps even worse, was based on who was leading at the time of the canceled races.

This will never happen at HorseTourneys. We also won’t hit you with seat-of-the-pants, last-minute race additions in a featured contest just to salvage the event. There’s a lot at stake in these tourneys, and we know how seriously you prepare for them. We respect that, and prefer to always take a longer-term view rather than a shorter-term one.

We value your business and sincerely appreciate your understanding when events like last Sunday’s occasionally pop up.