We run a fair number of Exacta tourneys around here, but only once a year can you play one with (at least) $50,000 on the line. Welcome to Exacta Extravaganza weekend!

Longshots in mythical-money tourneys are like determined bidders at an auction. When there’s just one present, then that one dominates. When there’s more than one, then all hell can break loose.

The Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship will be back in 2023 (on January 28), and you can win a $6,000 entry for it—plus a $500 travel stipend—for $384 this Sunday when we offer our first qualifier to the prestigious live-bankroll competition.

Unfortunately, with the premature termination of the Sunday card at Woodbine, our five-day featured-tourney week turned into a four-day featured-tourney week. However, there were still plenty of seats and cash to go around—and one player managed to visit the winner’s podium three times.

Just two weeks after the completion of the 2022 Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland, contest players—this week at HorsePlayers—can begin earning seats to the 2023 renewal of the world’s richest and most prestigious live-bankroll tournament, the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge. (The Breeders’ Cup, by the way, will be held at Santa Anita next year.)

Joseph Zuer has been a force to be reckoned with these days in HorseTourneys cash games. Last month, he won a Saturday, $30,000 HT Tour event plus a Big Bucks Pick & Pray on the same day. This past weekend, he spread his sharp-eyed skills across two days, sweeping the Saturday and Sunday Big Bucks tourneys.

With the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge in the books, the NHC takes over the sole spotlight at HorsePlayers. Meanwhile, there continue to be many different attention-grabbing featured events here at HorseTourneys.

The latest addition to the regular HorseTourneys lineup will premiere this Saturday. It’s a $25-buy-in, $2,000-Guaranteed, Low-Cap tourney, in which the maximum payouts for every mythical $2.00 win and place selection will be $26.00 (12-1) to win and $14.00 (6-1) to place.

The Ks were Special last week.

The Breeders’ Cup was still a day away, but while many of us were understandably preoccupied with handicapping Keeneland, Michael “Copa” Kavana didn’t ignore the matters at hand—at Mahoning Valley, Delaware and Horseshoe Indy.

For a horseplayer, it doesn’t get much better than Breeders’ Cup Weekend. It was true in 1984, and it’s true now. For a tournament player, the anticipation is, I would argue, even more intense. Contests are fun even if you’re focusing on cheap claiming races, but when you can play against great players on the greatest races, it sort of brings out the best in all of us—and reminds us why we grew to love this sometimes frustrating avocation in the first place.