Summer is the new Winter when it comes to racetrack cancellations. February’s snow and ice has nothing, it seems, on July’s heat and humidity. Fortunately, many of the weekend’s cancellations came with advance notice, so there was minimal damage suffered to our little tournament ecosystem here at HorseTourneys. Plus, everything was well-predicted in advance, so most of what went on was fairly easy to anticipate—Monmouth’s Saturday card notwithstanding.
With Del Mar now joining Saratoga on the daily race menus, it now officially feels like racing’s “Summer Season.” We start things off with a Pick & Pray weekend in which 14 of our 20 featured events will allow you to enter your picks and then do other things during the day if you wish. The freedom—and action—begins on Friday.
It always seems like a special weekend when Saratoga joins the HorseTourneys mix. The prizes are equally valuable, but tourney wins seem just a little bit sweeter when they require some success at the Spa, which is never an easy meet. Last weekend, James Lisowski was certainly up to the task.
The Fourth of July was an extra special day at HorseTourneys thanks to our $6,000 Charity Event. It was designed to do two things at once. First, to benefit three excellent horse racing-related charities: The Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund (PDJF), the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance (TAA) and the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. It was also designed to reward our players via free feeders that offered anyone who had played more than $250 over the past year a chance to get into the $5,000 cash tourney at no cost.
A four-day, Fourth of July weekend means extra time off (we hope!) and an oversized number of weekend featured tourneys. We have 27 in all between HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers—including a very special one on Thursday.
On what was an All Optional Live weekend at HorseTourneys, we saw players win more than one contest, and we also saw players with two entries in a tourney collect on both. Damian Terenzio accomplished both feats.
The choice is yours at HorseTourneys on Saturday and Sunday as it’s time for another “All Optional Live” weekend. This format allows you to choose your 10 obligatory plays from among 25 eligible races. Hate a race? Skip it! Hate a track? Skip it! Hate all the races? Well…now we have a problem.
As some of you may have seen, we have a $5,000 Charity tourney scheduled for the Fourth of July. Actually, it’s a $6,000 charity tourney, because there will be $5,000 in the pot but the winner will get an additional $1,000 to donate to his or her choice of the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund, the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance and the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. Cash payouts will go to the top 10 finishers.
Perhaps best of all, you can get into it for free.
It appeared to be a “Lost Sunday” for Robert Childress. He entered a bunch of featured tourney, and to say that things weren’t going well would be putting it mildly. Here was his scoresheet (on all three of his Sunday entries) after eight of the day’s first 12 races:
If you like action, this is a really terrific weekend coming up at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers. We have a total of 20 featured events on the Friday-Saturday-Sunday schedule and a rich blend of significant cash games and qualifiers to some of the top brick-and-mortar tournaments around the country. An excellent microcosm of the weekend offerings is on display for Friday.
