With the Lone Star Summer Betting Challenge drawing near, qualifying for the July 16th contest is drawing short. Sunday is the final weekend opportunity to earn a $1,000 entry into the on-track tournament.

Anyone who played a featured tourney on Independence Day had the misfortune of having to deal with Jim Lisowsky, Evan Trommer…or both. At least one of them was among the winners in all five Monday marquee games.

How many NHC berths are we guaranteeing on the Fourth? Four! They’re available in a special $100 Pick & Pray at HorsePlayers on Monday. 

June is not over yet, but the Month-End Blowout for it is—and that was a happy development for Gary “Macho Man” Machiz. 

Recently we made the final Saturday HT Tour event of the month a $50,000 Guaranteed tourney (instead of $30,000 Guaranteed)—while holding the line on the entry fee ($350). It’s time for another one this Saturday, and value-minded contest players should pay attention because the May renewal wound up going off with an extremely horseplayer-friendly takeout rate of 0.1 percent. As always, real-time tracking of the prize pool can be easily viewed on the right-hand side of the HorseTourneys homepage.

There were plenty of big prices floating around out there basically every day except Thursday, and since it was a “Pick & Pray weekend” here, one might have expected lots of multiple winners. That was not the case, however. A single big price can be great for a deft multi-tabler. Two or more can bring about chaos. We also had a 39-1 bomb on Sunday that, to this observer, was really hard to dope out—and not many could. 

If you’re a dad who’s a contest player, it’s always fun to try and qualify for the NHC for not a lot of money. The same holds true for mothers, daughters and sons. On Father’s Day, all four groups will have their chance at HorsePlayers in an atypical three-seats-guaranteed NHC qualifier—with an equally atypical entry fee of $100.

We couldn’t use as many Belmont Stakes Day races as we might have expected to, but the three that made the cut turned out to be exciting and/or lucrative heats. Obviously 19-1 winner Tribhuvan in the Manhattan was a key horse to have. Most—but not all—of the Saturday winners had that Chad Brown trainee. On Friday and Sunday, however, the top winners were all in a pretty tight, $15-$20 range. That meant multiple paths to victory and no single-day mega winners. In fact, two of the few to pull off multiple victories last week recorded their triumphs on different days. 

It’s Belmont Stakes Day on Saturday, so we’re raising the stakes by adding a $15,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray to the day’s lineup—which already includes a $30,000 Guaranteed Live-format tourney. Both will serve as HT Tour events this Saturday, so the opportunities to earn valuable HT Tour points will be doubled.

It was a fun week at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers—particularly with respect to NHC qualifying. We saw one of the event’s most storied names win her way back to the 2023 renewal. Meanwhile, a similarly happy outcome befell one of the most talked-about participants in NHC history.