In the next couple of weeks, the Santa Anita Closing Day Challenge (October 31), the first-ever BCBC Last Chance tournament (Thursday, November 4 at Del Mar/Xpressbet) and the popular Treasure Island Wager to Win event (November 5) will all take place. You can take your first crack at winning a seat to one or all of the above tests starting this weekend.

Have you yet to qualify for next January’s NHC? If so, you may want to make plans to play in the special Sunday $165 guaranteed qualifier at HorsePlayers that is restricted to those who have not yet earned a 2022 seat to the big dance. We call them “NHC Maiden Specials”…but if you win one of these, we promise you’ll feel like a graded-stakes winner.

Winning a qualifier is always a rush in itself. There’s nothing like the feeling of playing in a good tournament with “house money”. Jose Giron took that good feeling on Thursday—and kicked it up a notch on Saturday.

It’s opening weekend at Santa Anita, and that doesn’t just mean a Last Chance qualifier for Saturday’s Santa Anita Opening Weekend at Xpressbet…it means an inordinate number of high-quality stakes races as Breeders’ Cup preps start to really kick in.

Jorge Cruz-Aedo was second in the HT Tour standings heading into this past weekend. Look for the Texan to improve his position.

Cruz-Aedo is a fine handicapper any day of the week, but he seems to be especially good on Saturdays! This past Saturday, he won $15,193 for taking the day’s $30,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray (final pot came to $33,762).

Though the ink is barely dry on Ken Seeman’s $74,000 winner’s check and on the $6,000 Pegasus entry he won for capturing last weekend’s The BIG One, it is time to look forward to HorseTourneys’ next “major” competition, the $250,000 Guaranteed Flo-Cal Faceoff (featuring two days of mandatory, full-card selections on Gulfstream and Santa Anita racing) here on January 8th and 9th.

The BIG One has always been one of Ken Seeman’s very favorite tournaments. He has participated in all but two of them.

“It’s a small field in a big contest world,” he said. “You don’t have players throwing bombs left and right. And I really enjoyed playing it at Laurel with the camaraderie of that smaller group down there.”

One of the most respected competitors in the contest world, Ken Seeman of Wantagh, N.Y., added another entry to his impressive resume last weekend by capturing the 2021 renewal of The BIG One, which was held online at HorseTourneys for a second consecutive year.

With the top 15 players sharing in a cash prize pool currently at $159,000 (and growing) and the top 10 finishers also earning one of 10 seats to either the NHC, the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge or the Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship—and the field (with each contestant playing just one entry) numbering just 57—The BIG One probably represents your best mathematical chance to enter an important contest and leave with a nice prize.

In terms of last-race drama, we couldn’t have scripted the Exacta Extravaganza much better.

In as contentious a race as you’re ever going to see, Dylan Donnelly, 30, of Alta Loma, Calif., saw two of his three exacta box horses—Hallie’s Hero (9-1) and Abbaa (also 9-1)—prevail in a five-horse blanket finish in the final race of the two-day, $50,000 Guaranteed Exacta Extravaganza, the 11th at Woodbine. The dueling 9-1 shots combined on a $1 exacta payoff worth $152.20, and that propelled Donnelly from 3rd-place to first—a distinction that came with a prize of $20,250.