We’re raising the stakes on Saturday, Florida Derby Day. Instead of a $25,000 Guaranteed featured cash tourney, we’re upping the guarantee of this live-format event to $45,000—and tossing in a $10,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray as well. 

That’s not all. For the first time, we’ll be hosting tourneys on the Dubai World Cup card from Meydan. And with the Players Championship (current purse up to $279,660 and counting) set for Friday and Saturday, April 2-3, it means that this weekend is your final one in which to qualify for the all-cash middle leg of the 2021 Tourney Triple. 

It was some kind of Friday for Floridian Brett Wiener.

Not too long ago, if we had 14 featured tourneys during a weekend, that was a pretty solid Friday, Saturday and Sunday for us. This weekend we have 14—on Sunday, alone. Plus 10 on Friday and nine on Saturday. The total of 33 is the most we’ve ever had for a three-day weekend. 

The featured-tourney days last week seemed to take on one of two distinct patterns. Either there weren’t many longshots to be had (Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday) or there were so many (Friday, Sunday) that one bomb alone wouldn’t get you where you needed to be.

It’s another busy weekend at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers as Gulfstream, Aqueduct and Santa Anita serve as the backdrop for a wide array of marquee games offering significant cash prizes and lots of seats to important tournaments held around the country (and in cyberspace). 

As always, weekends around here are considered to begin on Friday.

History repeated itself on Friday—and not just because Raymond Riley won the day’s featured cash tourney for a second consecutive week.

Religious handicappers should have an edge this weekend with the majority of our featured events taking place in Pick & Pray format. (New converts to the prayerful life are always welcome at our house of worship.) By far, the most popular service will take place on Saturday, when there will be five chosen ones in the NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers. Even better, no collection basket will be circulated. That’s one reason the pews will be crowded that day. Of course, our weekend featured-tourney offerings are plentiful enough to accommodate any schedule. They begin on Friday. So without any further ado, let us pray.

Dr. Ronald Tang has a lot going on in his life these days. The 39-year-old South Pasadena, Calif, resident maintains a busy schedule as an oncologist and hematologist. And he and his wife Winnie welcomed their first child, Siena, into the world just four weeks ago. Tang still makes time to play the races, however. In fact, he does so on a pretty darned regular basis.

With the bulk of the Saturday and Sunday featured events run in Live format, multiple winners were in shorter supply this week. We still had a couple of them, however, and as we all know by now, surprisingly good performances can pop up just about anywhere. 

A great example is what Raymond Riley accomplished on Friday.

We challenge you to come up with a word that the handicapping contest world likes more than “challenge”. It seems to be kind of a go-to word when christening a tournament…or contest…and not without some reason, given that putting up a four-figure entry fee is sometimes a challenge in itself.