It’s already been a busy and important week for tourney play. Mark D’Amato and Scott Carson won the Battle of Saratoga tourneys on Wednesday and Thursday (HorseTourneys qualifers, representing about 12% of the field, made up half the top 10 on Wednesday and accounted for runner up Paul Shurman on Thursday). On Saturday, Monmouth will award 10 NHC seats and Hawthorne has a tourney of its own on Saturday-Sunday. But there’s also plenty of action this weekend to be had online.

It kicks off in earnest on Friday with a $5,000 Guaranteed game that closes at 3:48 pm ET. $2,500 will go to the winner and prizes are paid down to 4th. Contest races are Saratoga 6th through 10th, Woodbine 7th through 9th and Laurel 8th and 9th (10 races in all). Be aware, though, that less than a handful of spots remain open. So if you’re interested, act fast. Entry is $185.

Saturday’s “feature” is our $25,000 Guaranteed game with payments down to 8th place, including $12,500 to the winner. This one is $260 to enter and, again, this tourney is guaranteed to run and to pay full prizes. Contest races for this event (and all featured multi-track events on Saturday) are Saratoga 6th through 11th, Arlington 6th through 10th (it’s Million Day!) and Monmouth 8th and 9th — a robust 13 races in all.

We’ll also host our increasingly popular Saturday $2,000 Guaranteed exacta box tourney, which you can enter for just $42. It pays down to 5th with the winner receiving $750. There’s also a direct qualifier for the Orleans Fall Classic ($97), awarding entry and $750 travel per every 15 entries.

Last but not least, we’ll also be hosting a feeder for Sunday’s The BIG One direct qualifier. This one is a Pick & Pray for $106 with one of every five participants winning a $478 seat to Sunday’s event. Here’s an at-a-glance look at some of Saturday’s biggest tourneys:

So now you know about Sunday’s The BIG One event. Two packages are guaranteed on Sunday and keep in mind that just 12 seats remain available to be won online. The BIG One, a live-money event for the first time this year, will take place at Laurel on Sept. 24-25 and offer 10 NHC seats, 8 BCBC berths, 10 Horse Player World Series (HPWS) entries plus a cash prize pool of up to $200,000 (based on qualifying participation). There will be a maximum of 57 entries at The BIG One, which should be one of the real high-expectation events of the year.

Also on Sunday is an entry-only HPWS qualifier for $87, a $7,500 Guaranteed tourney for $190 with $3,750 to the winner and payments down to 5th place, and your very last chance to qualify for the August 20 Indiana Grand NHC qualifier. This is the first-ever NHC qualifier at Indiana Grand, and they are awarding three NHC seats. All HorseTourneys qualifiers receive not one but two entries to the Indy Grand event. This should be a great opportunity to win an NHC seat and/or rack up some valuable on-site NHC Tour points.

Here’s a visual on the top Sunday tourneys:

As much of the nation battles high temperatures this weekend, here’s hoping you beat the heat — and your tourney opponents — wherever you happen to be playing. Good luck!

With Saratoga and Del Mar in full swing, it’s a given that things were hopping at HorseTourneys this past weekend.

Our big event on Saturday was our 3-seat NHC tourney, run in the All-Optional format whereby players make 10 plays from among 20 eligible contest races. The red hot Shawn Turner finished first. But he had already garnered two NHC entries, so he was competing essentially just for the NHC Tour points. The NHC seats, themselves, went to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th-place finishers, Ty Alexander, Dennis Klein and Pete Manzo.

Saturday was our last chance to qualify for this week’s Battle of Saratoga, which is being conducted for the first time this year as two single-day tournaments. Our winners were Trey Stiles, Steve Arrison, Chris Dewey and Frank Foss. We thank all the players for their outstanding participation in these Saratoga qualifiers. Since starting these tourneys (the first ever to offer seats at a Saratoga tournament), we managed to send no fewer than 26 to Saratoga with full, 2-day packages that included a generous $750 in travel. I’ll be in Saratoga this week and hope to meet all 26 of you!

While Saturday represented a last chance for Saratoga, it represented a first chance to qualify for one of the stalwart tournaments on the schedule — the Horse Player World Series. William Payseno and Wayne Tam rode the parimutuel power of longshot Paola Queen (Test Stakes at Saratoga) to victory. Look for HPWS tourneys pretty much every weekend between now and next March.

Saturday also featured a pair of popular cash games. Our $12,500 Guaranteed game went to Juan Benedetti who tabbed not just Paola Queen but four other winners to grab the $6,250 first place prize. And Paola Queen was also a prominent part of our $2,000 Guaranteed exacta box game. Rick Vasquez correctly picked the Paola Queen-Lightstream exacta (it paid $289.50 for $1) to win the $750 first place money. This was hardly the highlight of the day for Vasquez, though. He also finished second that day in the prestigious Wynn Handicapping Challenge, earning $45,000 and an NHC seat. Congratulations, Rick!

The Sunday headliner was our The BIG One qualifier. There weren’t a lot of longshots winning on Sunday so the standings were tight. In the end, it was Nicholas Fazzolari and Gary Johnson who captured the two guraranteed full packages (from just 29 entries). Be aware…there are only 12 more seats available to The BIG One. So if you haven’t already earned one, be sure to keep playing each Sunday at HorseTourneys. We also have feeders during the week.

Our $7,500 Guaranteed game was another tight affair. Here it was Matthew Whitaker who took the crown (and the $3,750 top prize).

One of the top scores posted anywhere on Sunday at HorseTourneys was the $119.30 registered by Ryan Scharnowske in winning a double-entry to the August 20 Indiana Grand NHC qualifier. Scharnowske really demonstrated the power of multiple entries in a tournament. He controlled three of the 17 entries in this particular tourney, and while his first two didn’t make much noise, the horses he opted for in entry #3 really got him where he needed to be (and then some!) For the $123 cost of three entries, Scharnowske won $350 in entry fees, and now has a shot at one of the three NHC seats on offer at Indy Grand on August 20.

There were a pair of Last Chance contests on Sunday. Ryan Leeper shot out to a nice lead, then held on late to take our full package to next weekend’s Hawthorne tournament. And Douglas Schenk prevailed by a dime to win the Last Chance Monmouth qualifier over Anthony Kite and…Anthony Kite.

Schenk also took the exact same picks he used in the Monmouth tourney and entered them in our first-of-the-year qualifier for the Orleans Fall Classic. Smart move. This time, Schenk only managed second place. But that was more than good enough for an Orleans package. Look for Schenk at the Alligator Bar this fall along with winner Wayne Kwan and 3rd-place finisher Phil Cleek.

Congratulations to all of this weekend’s winners. And the very best of luck to all our HorseTourneys qualifiers playing this week at Saratoga, Monmouth and Hawthorne.

Now that the calendar has flipped to August, the action only intensifies at HorseTourneys.

While we wish good luck to everyone out at the Wynn this weekend (including the defending champ…our own McKay Smith!), there’s still a plethora of action to be found right here.

Our big game on Friday is a $5,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray tourney (most of our big games this weekend are Pick & Prays) that has an entry fee of $185. Contest races are already up. They are Saratoga 6th through 10th, Monmouth 7th and 8th and Woodbine 5th through 7th.

Saturday should be a doozy. Our marquee event is an All-Optional NHC qualifier with 3 packages guaranteed and up to 5 available, depending on participation.

Please note that this is a LIVE format game. Twenty contest races have been selected and from there, you pick the 10 you like best. Eligible contest races for this game are Saratoga 4th through 11th; Monmouth 5th, 6th, 10th and 11th; Woodbine 8th through 10th; and Del Mar 3rd through 7th. Entry on Saturday is just $180 and we are running feeders ahead of then. This format is great for those who like to cast a little wider net than what is typically allowed in online tourneys.

We’ll also have a direct feeder for the following day’s (Sunday’s) The BIG One qualifier. The Pick & Pray feeder costs $106 and features the following 10 races: Saratoga 7th through 11th; Del Mar 3rd and 5th; Woodbine 8th through 10th; and Gulfstream 9th and 11th. Winners have a shot at the two Guaranteed The BIG One packages up for grab on Sunday. Keep in mind that only 14 spots are left in that Sept. 24-25 tourney at Laurel with cash and contest seats galore.

There is even less time to qualify for the Battle of Saratoga on August 10-11. In fact, Saturday is your LAST chance to qualify for it! We already have 22 players going to play in each of the two single-day contests there, and we want to add several more to that roster. Saturday’s game is another Pick & Pray for $128 with 1 full package per 25 players. Contest races are the same as those for The BIG One feeder above.

Though time is winding down until the Battle of Saratoga, we’re just getting started on Saturday with the Horse Player World Series. Our FIRST qualifier for the 2017 event is Saturday. Again it’s a Pick & Pray with the same races as in the above two paragraphs. It’s just $87 to play and we’ll be awarding one $1,500 seat per every 20 entries. We already have 35 entries so at least two seats are a safe bet.

Tournament seats not your thing? There are still good options for you on Saturday. There’s our $12,500 Guaranteed game with $6,250 to the winner and prizes down to 4th. That one (Pick & Pray, of course) is $195 to play and full prizes will be paid regardless of participation. Plus there is also our young-but-growing $2,000 exacta box game with $750 to the victor and payments down to 5th. This one is a LIVE format event. Here is a link to a blog earlier this week mentioning some of the charms of these three-horse exacta box games: ow.ly/ziNF302R3pq

Keep an eye out for our $25,000 Guaranteed game NEXT Saturday. In the meantime, here’s an at-a-glance look at our six pack of big games THIS Saturday:

On to Sunday…

Sunday is our aforementioned The BIG One qualifier. Win a seat, plus travel, plus hotel plus all the trappings of one of the year’s great brick-and-mortar events. Two packages are guaranteed in this Pick & Pray event, and this is one that value-conscious players will definitely want to keep an eye on.

There’s also a $7,500 Guaranteed cash game, Pick & Pray again, for $190. The winner gets $3,750 and money goes down to 5th place.

And there are a pair of Last Chance qualifiers to be sure to make on Sunday: a full-package qualifier for Monmouth and a full-package game for Hawthorne. Both are Pick & Prays offering one package per 15 players. You can enter the Monmouth game for $77 and the Hawthorne affair for $100. The Jersey Shore is nice at this time of the year. And so is Chicago. Decide where you want to spend next weekend and act (and pick and pray) accordingly.

There’s also a very reasonably-priced $41 qualifier for the first-ever NHC qualifier at Indiana Grand on Aug. 20. Each HorseTourneys qualifier (1 per every 10 participants) gets not one, but two entries into the Indy tournament that will offer 3 NHC seats.

We’ll close our weekend highlights out with a First Chance to qualify for the October 13-15 Orleans Fall Classic. This is the first of several opportunities to win a full package to the Fall Classic…but why not jump on it now before others have picked up the scent?

Here’s a quick look at Sunday’s big menu:

Whether you prefer guarantees, first chances, last chances or something in between, we wish you the best of luck in all of your contest endeavors this weekend at HorseTourneys.

We are proud at HorseTourneys to be the only tournament site out there offering exacta box contests. Our strong and avid customer base gives us the confidence to experiment a bit in creating new formats that we believe at least a portion of our players will like. And our very capable and nimble Technical Department is fine with utilizing multiple page layouts and mechanics from tourney to tourney. HorseTourneys.com strives not to be a one-size-fits-all Website.

For those who haven’t tried one yet, the rules are very simple and intuitive. Instead of picking one horse per race for a mythical $2.00 win and place bet, you pick a three-horse exacta box. If you win, your score is credited with the full return on a $1.00 exacta box play. There is no price cap on exacta payoffs, and players have the option of selecting an alternate horse to be used in case one of the three main horses in your selection winds up being a late scratch. If a player doesn’t specify an alternate in a race in which one of his three horses is replaced, he is assigned the post time favorite to replace the scratched horse. (Or the second-favorite, if the post-time favorite was already among his original three in the exacta box.)

One of the most obvious appeals to exacta box contests is the ability to spread a bit. You don’t have to take a stand with a longshot — or with a short-priced favorite. You can use them both (plus one other) and still have a shot at a very nice payoff if you’re right. And this is where strategy comes in. Is this a race that looks like it can be locked up by using the first three choices? Is the favorite formidable but attempting to separate the rest of the field gives you a headache? Or does it shape up as an absolute chaos race that would have 10 different winners if it were run 10 different times?

These questions are part of what makes exacta box tourneys so much fun. But I touched on another reason earlier in this blog: No cap!

Do you see a 45-1 shot that you think is completely live? You can use him and get 100% full value on your contest score if he makes the exacta. No haircuts!

Of course, your strategy or approach can (and probably should) change somewhat from one exacta box tourney to another depending on whether you are playing a winner-take-all game, a 50-player game paying out to the top five finishers, or one of our many head-to-head games. (And all of the above come in both Live and Pick & Pray formats.)

Boxing the top three choices in every race probably won’t win you many 50-person tourneys. But it could be an effective strategy in a head-to-head in the hopes that your opponent’s more daring picks will give him just enough rope with which to hang himself. (Whether playing $2.00 win/place or the exacta box format, it is a fact of head-to-head life that you don’t have to necessarily be good…you just need to be less bad!)

If you haven’t tried an exacta box tournament yet, I heartily encourage you to play in one of our $8 games and dip your toe into the water. You might find that you really like it. Or you might hit upon a strategy that works really well for you and could make you dangerous in higher-stakes tourneys. Sometimes the biggest edges are to be had in games that haven’t quite found their way to the masses yet.

And even if you abhor the concept of exactas and think that all racetracks should go back to the 1940s when all you could play were win, place and show and the daily double (just one daily double, of course, on races 1 and 2…hence the adjective “daily”), I still think you should consider playing our $42 exacta box game on Saturdays. Why? The $2,000 purse for those are guaranteed and they don’t often sellout. The last two have run with player overlays of 25% (two weeks ago) and 20% (last week).

You’re not going to find better value than that anywhere. And you’ll only find exacta box contests right here at HorseTourneys.

Sometimes just one horse can get you where you want to be in a tournament. That was the case on both days of the just-completed July 30-31 weekend, though the two days had somewhat different complexions.

To have much chance at success on Saturday, it was a good idea to play the maiden Laoban in Saratoga’s Race 10, the Jim Dandy Stakes. Laoban paid $42.00 to win (for contest purposes with the 20-1 win cap in effect) and $17.20 to place. There were only six horses in the Jim Dandy, which means that plenty of players in our tourneys had him. And there were three tournament races that followed Laoban’s upset — leaving the final results of our games largely dependent on how players did AFTER hitting Laoban.

For Michael Sussman, Laoban was the first winner he had all day. But he then nailed the next two as well, including Del Mar 12-1 shot Conquest Cobra. His “turkey” won him the $7,000 top spot in our $15,000 Guaranteed game.

Ronald Peltz and Robert Gilbert each tabbed Laoban and Conquest Cobra, and that was sufficient to put them at the top of the heap in our Monmouth qualifier. They’ll both be heading to the Jersey Shore on August 13.

Laoban was also a veritable “must have” in Saturday’s Wynn Blowout, which offered five entries to the $200,000 guaranteed tournament next weekend in Las Vegas. Saturday’s “Wynn 5” were Mark Streiff, Lynn McGuire, David Browning, Joshua Chavez and Geoffrey Schutt.

And in our $2,000 Guaranteed Exacta Box game (which went off at a handsome overlay of nearly 20% to the players), the Laoban-Governor Malibu exacta was one of five winning exactas registered from among 12 mandatory plays by J. Streve, whose HorseTourneys account is now $750 higher.

Sunday was all about Snow Cloud (IRE) in Del Mar’s 6th race…and not just because the 41-1 shot paid the maximum contest prices of $42.00 to win and $22.00 to place.

Del Mar’s 6th race was the last race of our multi-track contests on Sunday, most of which were Live Format affairs. If you didn’t have Snow Cloud, there were no races left from which to make up your deficit.

So congratulations to our two The BIG One package winners, Dan Flanigan and Robert Schintzius Jr. And to our five Battle of Saratoga winners: Anthony Kite, Jonathon Kinchen, Ed Sehon, Lucas Van Zandt and Paul Shurman (we already have a HorseTourneys roster of 22 two-day package qualifiers to Saratoga, and that number will grow with our Last Chance Spa Tourney this Saturday). Three cheers for Chuck Browning, the winner of $3,750 in our $7,500 Guaranteed Sunday game. Congrats also to John Northern who won a package to Hawthorne and to David Brownfield and Bill Zvara, who won two entries each to Indiana Grand’s first-ever NHC qualifier later this month.

What did all 11 have in common? You guessed it. They all had Snow Cloud.

ENTRIES FOR 2017 HORSE PLAYER WORLD SERIES NOW AVAILABLE AT HORSETOURNEYS

August 1, 2016 – HorseTourneys announced today that it has begun making entries available to the next Horse Player World Series (HPWS), scheduled for March, 2017 at The Orleans Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

The Horse Player World Series, one of the major events on the horse racing tournament calendar, is a three-day, mythical-money contest offering large cash prizes. The 2016 HPWS winner, Daniel Kaplan, earned $319,680.

The first online qualifier at HorseTourneys will be held Saturday, August 6. It will carry an entry fee of $87, and will award a $1,500 entry to the contest per each 20 entries participating in the qualifier. The first qualifier is expected to award a minimum of two packages to the event. Low-cost, $19 feeder tournaments are currently running multiple times each day, leading up to August 6.

Qualifiers to the HPWS are expected to take place regularly at HorseTourneys through mid-March, 2017.

HorseTourneys customers may also purchase HPWS entries directly by using their existing site credits.

Questions should be directed to HorseTourneys Customer Support at support@horsetourneys.com.

The calendar reaches the end of its unofficial first half this weekend. But before the calendar flips from July to August, HorseTourneys will be coming in hot this weekend with a wide variety of cash and qualifying tournaments.

The Friday feature is a very nice $5,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray tournament, with $2,500 to the winner and payments down to 4th place. Contest races are Saratoga 6th through 10th, Gulfstream 7th, 8th and 10th, and Laurel 5th and 6th.  It carries an entry fee of $185, but so far, as of about 8:00 pm, Eastern time, on Thursday, there are only eight entries, so mark this down as a possible overlay event prior to its closing on Friday at 3:48 pm ET.

On Saturday, our headline event is the Last Chance to qualify for the $200,000 Guaranteed Wynn Handicapping Challenge on August 5-6. Entries are $116 each, and we’ll be awarding one $2,000 entry per every 20 players participating. Of course, you can try to win your way into the Saturday qualifier in a Wynn feeder prior to Saturday. The 12 contest races for this — and most of our top Saturday tourneys — are Saratoga 6th through 10th, Gulfstream 10th through 12th, and Del Mar 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th

We’re also hosting a pair of very worthwhile guaranteed cash games on Saturday. One is our $15,000 Guaranteed game and the other is our $2,000 Guaranteed exacta box games where you pick a three-horse exacta box for each race play. Both of these contests ran as nice overlays (especially the exacta box game) last week, so value hawks should definitely want to mark these down on their Saturday to-do lists.

Also on Saturday is our Round 2 feeder for the next day’s The BIG One tournament. For $107, you can take part in a game that will award a $478 entry to Sunday’s The BIG One direct qualifier per every five players. So your chances of success here are pretty good!

This provides a nice segue for Sunday’s action which is topped by, you guessed it, our The BIG One full-package direct qualifier. We’ll be awarding two packages — including travel, hotel, buffets and open bar — guaranteed, regardless of the number of entrants. So in case you are walking around lucky and don’t know it, be sure to enter this tournament on Sunday if you haven’t already qualified for it.

A $7,500 guaranteed game with $3,750 going to the winner is also on tap for Sunday. As is a trio of direct qualifying tournaments that can send you on your way to Saratoga, Hawthorne and/or Indiana Grand during the month of August. The Saratoga and Hawthorne qualifiers include a travel stipend, while the Indiana Grand qualifier just covers your entry fee, but you will arrive with not one, but TWO entries in that first-ever NHC qualifier at Indy Grand, where three NHC seats will be up for grabs.

Here is an at-a-glance look at some of our best guaranteed tourneys this weekend:

Good luck in all your tournaments on these final two days in July!

Like most contest sites, HorseTourneys runs plenty of contests that require a minimum number of participants for the contest to “go”. And others where the number of prizes (i.e. contest seats) is determined by the number of entries.

We are also, however, firm believers in guaranteed contests — and not just ones where we are certain we will reach our desired participation targets.

Last Saturday, for example, we hosted two guaranteed cash games that ran as overlays for the players:

Our $2,000 guaranteed exacta box contest attracted 38 of a hoped-for 53 entries at $42 each. So we took in $1,596 and paid out $2,000. Players were getting a positive-expectation scenario of more than 25%.

Meanwhile, our $50,000 guaranteed event attracted an even 100 players at an entry fee of $495, so we lost $500 in this tournament. The overlay to players was much smaller than in the exacta box tourney, but it was an overlay nonetheless, and there were still hard-dollar losses on our end.  Factoring in the fees that HorseTourneys pays on player deposits, the losses are even greater.

For loyal fans of HorseTourneys (or relatives of HT employees), fear not — we have not lost our minds, and we are not foolishly going broke.

First off, keep in mind that we do make a little bit of money in the feeder tournaments that lead in to virtually all of the major events. So any losses we suffer on the big day are mitigated somewhat thanks to those feeders.

But even when we come up short (and we did come up short…twice!…on Saturday), we still firmly believe that there are long-term benefits that accrue from these short-term losses.

Many of our players are extremely price conscious, and we think that is great. We want those players playing at HorseTourneys. They tend to be sharp, successful players in it for the long haul. So we strive to make sure our players can delve into our extensive menu on a given day and pick out not just their favorite format or track, but also zero in on contests that they feel offer optimal value.

In fact, we feel so strongly about this that we don’t just place guarantees on small-money tournaments, we’ll stick our neck out and guarantee the purse even on our richest contests — as Saturday’s $50,000 game will attest. (And, yes, we have a LOT more to lose when we guarantee a $50,000 game compared to a $1,000 or $2,000 game).

Value aside, we also think it’s important for players to know that certain key contests will take place (and pay full prizes) regardless of participation levels. As contest players ourselves, we are well aware of the preparation that you put in before the first race of a contest takes place. When I played baseball, I hated getting rained out almost as much as losing. So much buildup and anticipation goes right out the window. We think the feeling is comparable when the plug gets pulled on a contest at the 11th hour.

Ultimately, we feel that if our website, our contests, our formats, our takeout levels, etc. make players happy, more players will play with us and our tournaments will only get bigger and better. (Maybe, to take one of Saturday’s examples, we will really grow the popularity of our exacta box tournaments.)  Guaranteed contests are an important part of all that.

So while we certainly aren’t jumping for joy when we take one or two on the chin, we do feel that we can shake it off a little more easily…a little more readily…than perhaps some others can.

Do you have any suggestions for future guarantees? Or for other ways that we can improve? Leave a comment below and let us know. Your opinions are important to us.

It was business as usual this past weekend…which, at HorseTourneys, means a lot of big money and lucrative tournament packages were awarded.

Our richest tournament took place on Saturday when Kevin Jones rode a strong second half of the contest to victory in our $50,000 guaranteed event, which was worth $22,500 to Kevin. The event drew an even 100 players (at $495 each), meaning that it was a positive-expectation tourney for all players. Our $2,000 guaranteed exacta box tournament that same day also wound up as a positive-expectation game and Ruben Lopez reaped the rewards, nailing the last two contest races at Del Mar to bring home $750.

Elsewhere on Saturday, renowned contest player Rich Nilsen tabbed a 7-1 winner in the final event at Del Mar to leapfrog G.T. Nixon and grab a full package to the August 13 tournament at Monmouth Park. Fortunately for Nixon, the tourney awarded two full packages to Monmouth, so he too will represent HorseTourneys at the Jersey Shore.

We also gave out one package on Saturday to the Gold Coast Classic and the much-the-best winner was Benjamin Coppola, who posted a whopping score of $205.90, which would have been good enough to win pretty much any tournament that day. An “atta boy” or a “hang with ’em” or whatever your favorite consolation phrase is should go out to runner-up Lindsay Hurst who posted a very strong score of $165.00 — more than $65 higher than the third-place finisher. (Shades of Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson, perhaps.)

Sunday saw Brian Gross and Sean O’Malley each earn full packages to September’s The BIG One at Laurel. Gross was the controlling speed early and O’Malley came charging home late to finish atop the field of 35. Keep an eye out for these The BIG One qualifiers each week. A player’s chance for success is pretty high in these.

Sunday was also our Wynn Blowout day, and it is my happy duty to report that no fewer than nine HorseTourneys players won entries to the popular August 5-6 event. If you still haven’t won a spot for the Wynn Handicapping Challenge, be sure to play in our last chance qualifier this Saturday for just $116 (with feeders running in to it all week long).

Our $7,500 guaranteed game yesterday went to William Roth who, along with the next two finishers, each had 7-1 Patriots Rule in the last race of the contest. Finishing fourth was Ed Peters, who nearly won his third Sunday cash game of the month here at HorseTourneys. One more July chance for Ed this Sunday!

Roth used his exact same picks yesterday to also take home a full, two-day package to The Battle of Saratoga on August 10-11. He will be accompanied by fellow winners Brian Costello (1st), Joseph Labounty (3rd) and James Timinck (4th). They join 12 earlier HorseTourneys qualifiers to Saratoga and we’ll be adding to that total this week and next for sure.

We were proud yesterday to send what we believe are the first three qualifiers ever to the first Indiana Grand NHC qualifier ever. As a result, Ryan Leeper, Paul Kloeker and Phil Cleek will all be in the Hoosier State with two entries each as they compete for the three available NHC seats on August 20. There’ll be more chances to qualify this week and in the weeks ahead.

Last but not least, in the category of “Pretty is as pretty does”, congratulations to our Hawthorne package winner Charles Norris, who used the 6 horse in every race of his Pick & Pray, except of course in the Coaching Club American Oaks which only had five horses.

Charles’s prayers were definitely answered yesterday, and we hope yours are in the week ahead. Good luck!