Last year, Eric “Skeet” Boyd set a HorseTourneys record by capturing nine featured weekend cash tourneys. The remarkable showing of excellence and consistency led to him being crowned 2024 HorseTourneys Tour Champion.

Last weekend, though, Boyd enjoyed his biggest victory yet, taking home a total of $144,519 for topping a field of 286 entrants in the two-day Flo-Cal Faceoff—an event that required contestants to make mythical $2.00 win and place selections on each race of the Saturday and Sunday cards from Gulfstream Park and Santa Anita Park.

Last year, HorseTourneys unveiled a four-race series of its top events, the Flo-Cal Faceoff in January, the Players Championship in April, the Spa & Surf Showdown in August and the brand new Pick & Pray® Classic in November. Known as the HorseTourneys Grand Slam, the series awarded bonuses to those who, based on a points formula, performed best throughout the four marquee tourneys.

This year, there’s another addition.

HorseTourneys is introducing a fifth competition to the series: the $250,000 Guaranteed New York, New York Challenge. The resulting five-contest sequence will be known, collectively, as the HorseTourneys Champions Series.

Dave “Gambling Actuary” Nichols picked 4 winners and 1 runner up across the 12-race featured schedule on Sunday. One of his victors was a whopper—Go Jocelyn Go ($52.00, $26.80) in the 9th at Tampa Bay Downs. The final scoring total for Nichols was $101.20.

That total wasn’t the highest of the day. A small handful of players did better. But no one accomplished more with what they had, thanks to Nichols’s aggressive multi-tabling.

No sooner was Eric “Skeet” Boyd crowned 2024 HorseTourneys Tour champion then the 2025 edition of the HT Tour got underway. Again, it will be a year-long competition concluding on December 31st. Here’s how it works:

Our first featured tourney of the week, Wednesday’s $5,000 Guaranteed cash game, reminds us of a powerful lesson perhaps espoused most effectively by noted philosopher Felix Unger.

Never assume.

We’ve often amused ourselves in recent years referring to Eric Boyd as Eric “B Connected” Boyd in a nod to the name of the Boyd Gaming players card utilized at The Orleans. However, we now feel compelled to officially change his HorseTourneys nickname to Eric “Skeet” Boyd.

Why? 

Because that is his actual nickname…and it has been such for a very long time.

If Evan Trommer made a New Year’s resolution to resume winning contests in bunches here at HorseTourneys, he is off to a very good start.

There’s an old saying in horse racing: Keep yourself in the best possible company and your horses in the worst. In a way, Scott Galica did that on Saturday.

Christmas came early to several featured-tourney players who wound up with full sacks last week. One of them was Curtis Meyer, who said, “Ho, ho, ho”—one “ho” for each of his Friday triumphs.

Ken Seeman and Steven Meier had similar weekends around here last week—similarly excellent, to be more precise.