Good news/bad news: The bad news is that after Saturday, we’ll have to wait until April to play Keeneland again. The good news is that we’ll have plenty of great Keeneland Tourneys (multi-track and solo) through Saturday. Plus another exciting NHC qualifier this Sunday.

Things get rolling in earnest on Friday with our $5,000 guaranteed game. It will be a Pick & Pray, as will most of our big tourneys this weekend. As we have warned in recent weeks, these Friday games with Keeneland included are very popular, so enter early. Contest races have already been determined: Belmont’s 6th through 9th; Keeneland’s 7th through 10th; and Laurel’s 10th and 11th (11 races in all). As a guaranteed game, full prizes will be paid down to 4th place regardless of participation, and the winner gets $2,500. Entry fee is $185.

Our most lucrative tournament of the weekend takes place on Saturday when we host our low-takeout $25,000 guaranteed contest. This Pick & Pray event pays down to 8th place with $12,500 up top for the winner. Entries are $260 each and capped at 107. This would be a great way to give some serious padding to your Breeders’ Cup bankroll. Of course, full prizes will be paid out regardless of headcount. (Last Sunday, our $7,500 game paid out at a healthy overlay to players!)

We also have an entry-only Horse Player World Series qualifier on Saturday for $87. We’ll award one entry ($1,500 value) per every 20 contestants. There will also be a direct qualifier to the November 26 Twin Spires Online Championships with one winner per 15 entries (at $58 each) moving on to the “cyberfinal”. These Twin Spires qualifiers have been popular with three or four winners each weekend. So you certainly don’t need to “sweep the card” to do well here. Here’s a visual of our big Saturday games:

On to Sunday…

Sunday’s featured event is again a 2-package-guaranteed NHC direct qualifier that could offer up to four NHC packages depending on participation. We will give away one package per every 70 entries but at least two no matter what. Only five more opportunities remain (including this Sunday) to qualify for the 2017 NHC at HorseTourneys. (After that, you’re on your own!) Entries this week are once again just $160. Last Sunday’s NHC qualifier was extremely exciting with Roger Cettina placing two entries in the top three (only the second time someone has done that in an NHC qualifier at HorseTourneys). Roger was only able to lay claim to one of the three available NHC packages because a) NHC rules only allow for one person to win one package per qualifier plus b) Roger had already qualified for the NHC once this year, so the one package gave him his maximum complement of two. As a result, the third NHC package awarded last Sunday dropped to our 4th-place finisher. And you just may see more of this in our subsequent five NHC qualifiers. As players max out on NHC entries, most still play to amass more NHC Tour points. When you see one of these players ahead of you (and we do our best to denote this in our real-time standings), you have the comfort of knowing they are playing for Tour points only. So that is one fewer player for you to worry about in terms of winning an NHC seat.

Sunday will also offer another chance to qualify for the November 25-26 Hawthorne Fall NHC Super Qualifier. Hawthorne will run two separate single-day tourneys costing $350 each day. A win in a HorseTourneys direct qualifier gets you entry fees for both days ($700 total) plus another $500 in travel. Entry is $93 with one of every 15 moving on to Chicagoland for Thanksgiving weekend.

Also scheduled for Sunday is a qualifier for the Del Mar Fall Classic (a whopping $4,500 value) for $212 and our $7,500 guaranteed cash game where you could earn $3,750 for a $190 entry fee. Again, this tourney went off at a healthy overlay last week. And perhaps it could do so again, especially if some of our normal Sunday players suffer from a Keeneland hangover!

Last but not least we’ll mention our Sunday $1,500 guaranteed exacta box game. If you’re not familiar with these, try one. We’ll be having one on Breeders’ Cup Saturday, so this would be a great way to sharpen your exacta box tourney skills ahead of the big weekend at Santa Anita.

Here’s an at-a-glance look at Sunday’s featured action:

And here’s hoping your Breeders’ Cup “preps” this weekend are winning ones. Good luck!

It’s a big weekend ahead of mainly live-format competitions this weekend at HorseTourneys. So let’s start off with an exception to the general rule!

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Our NHC direct qualifier last Saturday generated a fair degree of buzz on social media for how the competition concluded.

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It was an active weekend in the tournament world — both onsite and online. HorseTourneys sends hearty congratulations out to Brent Sumja, who won the three-day Orleans Fall Classic this past Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Las Vegas. And also to Ryan Steigmeier, who scored a resounding victory in Sunday’s Keeneland NHC-BCBC Challenge. (We spoke to Ryan earlier today, and you can read more about his terrific win in our separate blog post about the Keeneland tournament.)

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Ryan Steigmeier never really considered himself a serious tournament player. That may be changing, though, following the 38-year-old Title Insurance executive’s win in Sunday’s Keeneland NHC-BCBC Challenge, which earned the North Royalton, Ohio resident a total of $26,370 in cash, an NHC seat and a Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge seat.

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Before we take a look at this weekend’s action, we want to send out special good luck wishes to the 17 HorseTourneys qualfiers who will be competing this weekend at the Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge and the 21 HorseTourneys winners who will do battle at the Orleans Fall Classic. Nothing would make us happier than to see HorseTourneys graduates take first place in both events.

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It’s not just a great weekend of Breeders’ Cup prep races. Opening Day at Keeneland is Friday and we’re ready for it here at HorseTourneys. We’ll be hosting 24 full-card, Keeneland-only tourneys on Friday (including three guaranteed cash games) with prices ranging from $5-$110 so that you can jump right in to what is always an exciting meet each fall. Here are just a handful of them:

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Someone gleefully commented to me last month that she had won an NHC seat at HorseTourneys for just $18 by winning a feeder, then winning the direct qualifier that followed. This week you don’t even need the 18 bucks. If you have played at least $1,000 lifetime at HorseTourneys, you can win an NHC seat for free by finishing in the top 8 of tonight’s free contest…

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There were a lot of happy winners at HorseTourneys on Saturday.

Daniel Kaplan nailed three of the last four winners to win our Horse Player World Series qualifier. And since two HPWS entries were up for grabs, our runner-up, Bill Downes (track announcer at Indiana Grand) was pretty pumped as well.

Downes wasn’t the only happy HorseTourneyor to take to Twitter last weekend. When Jobby Blevins won our $12,500 Guaranteed event ($6,250 to the victor) for the second time in four weeks, Jobby’s #1 supporter not only helped spread the word…she also issued a warning:

Scores were particularly high, as might be expected, in our 3-seat-guaranteed NHC qualifier on Saturday.

When the dust cleared, it was Douglas Draper, John Marino and John Garofano Jr. punching their tickets to Treasure Island in January.

And it was Mark Ansley and Joe Koury who will be heading to Vegas later this month to play in the Orleans Fall Classic by virtue of their 1-2 finish on Saturday. They both win a $500 entry plus $750 in travel.

On Sunday, the Twin Spires Online Championship qualifier was far from our most lucrative tourney, but it featured our most eye-popping score.

Stephen Diaz’s tally of $115.00 in the Twin Spires contest would have also won every other multi-track contest we offered that day by about $27 or more. Diaz ran off the screen, but the photo for 2nd, 3rd and 4th was important because it was a 4-spot tourney. Kimberly Shortleff, John Northern and Michael Odorisio picked up the pieces in those three slots.

Fortunately for Hesham Ragab, Diaz sat out the $7,500 guaranteed tourney. The left the $3,750 winner’s share to Hesham, who amassed his $82.90 score from just three winners.

The aforementioned John Northern did opt to play in multiple tournaments and it paid off for him. Using the exact same picks that got him a Twin Spires Online Championship entry, John also earned a valuable $3,500 package to the Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge by finishing second to winner Robert Flaska.

In other Sunday action, Kevin Willet ($81.80) grabbed a highly desirable $4,500 package to the Del Mar Fall Classic. And John Verdin hit the last race exacta of $61.30 ($1 payoff) in Santa Anita race 6 to win $600 in our $1,500 guaranteed exacta box game.

Some quick reminders for the week ahead:

Saturday will be your last chance to qualify for the Orleans Fall Classic. And that day, we’ll also be hosting a special $25,000 guaranteed game plus a 2-seat-guaranteed NHC qualfier which was a late addition to the calendar. So you’ll want to be playing on the 8th. And on Sunday, the 9th, it’s your last chance to win a $3,500 package to Keeneland where, the following week, there will be cash, NHC berths and BCBC berths aplenty.

Have a great first full week of October.

It’s almost time to flip another page on the wall calendar. But before we do, don’t forget to play our Guaranteed $5,000 tourney on Friday, September 30.  The competition pays down to 4th place with $2,500 to the winner and full prizes will be played no matter how many (or few) show up. It’s a Pick & Pray game with an entry fee of $185. Contest races will be Belmont’s 6th through 9th; Churchill’s 9th and 10th; and Santa Anita’s 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th.

What better way to ring in October on Saturday than with a big, 3-seat-guaranteed NHC qualifier for $160 (two entries maximum per person). If we get 280 entries, we’ll toss in a fourth NHC package. This is one of the few games this weekend that will utilize a live format. Contest races for this and our other featured tourneys on Saturday are Belmont’s 6th through 10th; Santa Anita’s 4th through 8th and Churchill’s 7th and 10th (12 races in all).

The weekend’s richest event also takes place on Saturday — it’s our $12,500 Guaranteed game, which you many enter for $195. The winner gets $6,250 and prizes are paid (guaranteed) down to 6th place.

Saturday also has a full package qualifier to next month’s Orleans Fall Classic (one package per 15 entries) for $97 and an entry-only qualifier (one per 20) to the 2017 Horse Player World Series for an entry fee of $87. Here’s a look at some of Saturday’s best games:

Sunday has five tourneys vying for top billing. We’ll start with our qualifier to the November 26 Twin Spires Online Championship. (We just started these last weekend and think they’re great.) We’ll be awarding one $750 package ($500 entry + $250 cash) for every 15 players, with entries costing just $58. The Twin Spires Online Championship offers cash along with 20 NHC seats and 30 HPWS entries.

Also on Sunday are direct qualifiers to the Del Mar Fall Classic ($4,500 value; $212 entry fee, one winner per 25) and the Keeneland NHC/BCBC Challenge ($3,500 value, $160 entry fee, one winner per 25).

Cash game players will like our $7,500 Guaranteed game and our $1,500 Guaranteed Exacta Box game. Both contests pay down to 5th with top prizes of $3,750 in our $7,500 game ($190 entry fee) and $600 in our Exacta game ($54 entry). Here’s a snapshot of our featured Sunday schedule:

For those who missed the news last week, our exacta box games now include our popular “Speed Picks” selection feature. So entering selections for Exacta games are now every bit as quick and easy as with our other more traditional win/place tourneys.

Enjoy the football, the conclusion to the pennant races and, of course, all of our games this weekend at HorseTourneys.  Good luck!