Trailing by $34.30 with just Sunday’s 12th race at Santa Anita remaining, Brian Graziano of Manahawkin, N.J., made his final mythical win-place wager on 11-1 shot Kawazaki. When the son of Holy Roman Emperor prevailed in deep stretch by a neck and paid $24.60 to win and $11.40 to place, it moved Graziano from third place to first—just $1.70 ahead of runner up Evan Trommer, who had spent much of the Players Championship’s Day 2 atop the leaderboard.

Thanks to our friends at Breeders’ Cup, HorseTourneys is delighted to offer — for the first time ever — a special, high-end Pick & Pray tourney focused on horse racing’s championship weekend. Appropriately enough, we are calling it the Breeders’ Cup Pick & Pray.

Sunday’s featured tourneys were sabotaged by the always-dangerous combination of heavy rain and loud music. Things were sufficiently dry and quiet on Wednesday through Saturday, however, and that meant good things for several HorseTourneys competitiors—especially our 2020 Spa & Surf Showdown champion Scott Fiedler.

It’s always a heady feeling to hit a 50-1 winner. Can you imaging hitting two in one day…over the course of just 12 plays? 

Andy Asaro can.

While many of our very best players—including Dan Piazza, who earned both of his NHC entries right here at HorseTourneys—were out in Vegas doing their thing, Eric “Skeet” Boyd was doing HIS thing…playing in and winning our featured cash games.

Perhaps unfortunately for the other 600 or so competitors in this weekend’s NHC, Dave “Gambling Actuary” Nichols is coming in hot to Vegas.

Jay Johns, the 2022 NHC Tour champion, had an excellent start to the featured-tourney week. The recently retired president of IHOP also had a rooty tooty fresh n’ fruity finish to it.

I’m not sure when the last time was that we saw so many players reel off grand-prize heists on consecutive days. At the top of this list last weekend was David Nelson.

Saturday seemed like one of those days where you just needed to remain patient—because if you missed the longshot that just came in, another one was going to hit shortly.

Five of the day’s 12 contest winners paid $20.00 or more in the win hole—and since this was a Pick & Pray weekend around here, it meant that if you were hot, you could have an extra nice day. Just ask Thomas McClenin.

It’s obviously very early still in 2025, but key pushes in the HorseTourneys Tour standings can absolutely come at any point in the year. Take, for example, the exploits this past week of Darryl Lacy.