Tom Blosser Wins a Pair of NHC Seats…for $200; Matthew Bickey Collects Monmouth and Hawthorne Entries Plus $3,483; Kirk Tesar Finishes First on Saturday and Again on Monday (Weekly Recap, May 22-27)

Every Friday, HorsePlayers offers a $75 NHC qualifier with 2 seats guaranteed, and on Memorial Day, they hosted a $125 NHC play-in with 5 spots certain.

These low-cost qualifiers are very popular—both for the promise of a cheap ticket to the big dance in Vegas and for the chance to earn NHC Tour points…which could also result in an NHC berth.

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William Smith Wins Five Sunday Tourneys; William McMillan Takes All in Lone Star Qualifier; John Nichols Earns NHC Seat Plus $8,549 (Weekly Recap, May 16-19)

Saturday may have been D. Wayne Lukas’s day, but Sunday belonged to “Battlin’” William Smith.

All eight of Sunday’s featured tourneys were Live-format games, but Smith played them—five of them anyway—as though they were Pick & Prays. If you know, you know, I guess, and on Sunday, Smith knew.

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Gary Blair Captures Cash Features on Saturday and Sunday; James Cosenza Also Triumphs on Two Different Days; Ted Apple Takes Two Bites at Preakness Challenge (Weekly Recap, May 8-12)

Last week offered mainly Pick & Pray competitions, and most days there were one or two prices that stood out from the rest. If you liked the one or two, you did well, and if you played more than one featured tourney, you may well have had multiple successes.

A couple of players, though, captured the magic on more than one day. One of them was Gary Blair.

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William Holmes Takes Three Sunday Tourneys; Howard Welsh Best in Both Big Bucks Battles (Weekly Recap, May 1-5)

Playing the races on Kentucky Derby Day can be fun, exciting—and draining. For those who attend the Derby, things are made more challenging by dealing with the crowds and getting home on Sunday. As a result, many horseplayers—even die-hards—take the day after the Derby off.

Happily for him, William Holmes did not do that.

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Matthew Bickey Wins $149,310 in Players Championship; David Barnier Earns $10,139 Plus an NHC Seat; Ron Tang Enjoys Victories on Back-to-Back Days (Weekly Recap, April 4-7)

Trailing Christian Orscher by $10.64 with one contest race remaining in the $415,418 Players Championship, Matthew Bickey boldly selected 21-1 shot British Isles. When the Richard Baltas charge got up for second in that 11th race at Santa Anita behind winning 6-5 favorite Ngannou, the result was a $12.00 place payoff for British Isles backers—and a triumph worth $149,310 for Bickey.

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