There were a lot of Pick & Prays last week, but a surprisingly small number of multiple winners in featured-tourney action—by our count, only a pair…and one of those came over two separate days. So things were highly competitive during something of a “share-the-wealth” week that began on Wednesday.

After making their 2022 debut last Sunday, Spa & Surf Showdown qualifiers get the “One-a-Day” treatment this weekend. So if you’ve got your eye on the $400,000 Guaranteed final leg of the Tourney Triple, not a (weekend) day will go by when you can’t take a shot at landing a $2,500 seat for just $147.

Several players who have left their mark on the NHC in recent years left their mark on our featured tourneys last week…starting right off the bat on Wednesday.

The dates have been booked and the first qualifiers now set—for both the $400,000 Guaranteed Spa & Surf Showdown and The BIG One.

High-stress, big-money tournaments are not normally Riley Drexler’s milieu.

“Seeing so many impressive names on the leaderboard…” the Chicago resident said, his voice trailing off. “To say I was nervous would be an understatement.”

It’s hard to play more consistently well over a two-day period than Riley “The Glide” Drexler did last weekend in the second annual Players Championship.

Saturday and Sunday, HorseTourneys will host the second annual Players Championship, a two-day, All Optional Live competition in which contestants make 15 mythical $2.00 win-and-place selections each day from among 30 eligible contest races. The purse is guaranteed to be at least $350,000. Last year, in the inaugural edition of the Players Championship, Dan Wilde of Cedar Park, Tex., won $213,000 from an overall prize pool of over $555,000.

Every now and then, you stumble upon a horse you want to root for just because of the name. Many would say that one such example is Good Bye Putin. The Santa Anita-based runner didn’t just make $2 hunch bettors smile with his 15-1 victory in Sunday’s 6th race, he also delivered big rewards to several HorseTourneys contestants —most notably Shawn Turner.

In honor of Florida Derby Day, our featured Saturday cash tourney (which serves as that day’s HT Tour competition) will have its purse guarantee bumped up $15,000 to $45,000. The entry fee will remain at its customary $350, so the cost to play is the same…we just feel comfortable upping the guarantee on what figures to be a big day.

By now, we’re sort of used to seeing players successfully double down (or triple down) on their picks across multiple events on a given afternoon—and it’s certainly nice to be amply rewarded when it turns out to be “our day.”