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.

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.

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.

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.

We all have our favorite contests that we hope to win our way into each year. What a feeling it must be to qualify for five of them…in one day. 

Brett Wiener knows that feeling.

It’s hard to enjoy a better one-two punch than Gary Brous experienced last weekend. Or was it a one-five punch?

It might be my imagination, but John “The Clocker” Nichols always seems to heat up around here at this time of year—and 2024 has been no exception.

For most players, winning a $2,000 seat via qualifier to a tourney like the Players Championship would be cause for celebration. When it happened three-and-a-half weeks ago to Matthew Bickey, however, he was pissed off.

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.

The second leg of the 2024 HorseTourneys Grand Slam takes place this weekend with the $350,000 Guaranteed Players Championship set for Saturday and Sunday here at HT.