Congratulations to all!

Courtesy of Hawthorne Race Course, here are the results from each day of the Hawthorne Fall NHC Super Qualifier, held this past Friday and Saturday. The top four finishers each day receive NHC berths (unless the player is already double-qualified).

Our Weekend Preview comes at you early this week because, well, so does the weekend. But we think we’re saving the best tourney for the last day.

We have two special games slated for Turkey Day closing at 2:50 pm ET.

If you prefer to stuff your turkey with cash rather than seasoned bread crumbs, there’s our $5,000 Guaranteed tourney, a Pick & Pray, with $2,500 to the winner and prizes down to 4th place. Entry fee is $185, and contest races will be Aqueduct’s 7th through 9th; Churchill’s 9th through 12th; Del Mar’s 5th through 7th; and the 7th and 10th from Fair Grounds – 12 races in all.

Utilizing the same 12 races, we will also host a special holiday edition of our Horse Player World Series entry-only qualifier with one in 20 winning a $1,500 entry for the 2017 event next spring. This, too, is a Pick & Pray with entries costing $87.

There will also be a bountiful table of single-track and multi-track cash games and feeders on Thanksgiving. So fill your plate as many times as you wish.

And regardless of heavily you indulge on Thanksgiving, there will be plenty of tasty leftovers the next day. Should you win, Friday will be anything but Black.

Our Featured weekend schedule resumes in earnest on Saturday – one of the great betting days of the year with the Cigar Mile and Remsen at Aqueduct, the Golden Rod and Kentucky Jockey Club at Churchill, plus excellent cards at Del Mar (two graded turf stakes races) and elsewhere.

Our two marquee games on Saturday are a $25,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray with $12,500 up top and prizes to 8th place for a buy-in of $260 — and a full-package Horse Player World Series Pick & Pray for $116 with one in 25 winning a $1,500 HPWS entry, four nights’ accommodations at The Orleans, plus $500 for travel.

Then, on Sunday, the holiday weekend closes with a bang.

Sunday is the day of 2016’s final NHC qualifier at HorseTourneys. And what a qualifier it is. For the usual $160 entry fee, we are guaranteeing five packages (including accommodations at Treasure Island plus $1,000 travel) and if we get enough players, we will award as many as 10 packages. Unlike most of this weekend’s tourneys, this one will be a Live-format contest.

We’ll also be hosting our first qualifier of the year for the popular Surfside tourneys on December 30-31. One in 20 contestants will win $1,180 in entry fees (sufficient for both days) plus $500 in travel. Cost to enter this Pick & Pray qualifier is just $98.

There’s also our customary Sunday Horse Player World Series entry-only qualifier for $87, with one in 20 emerging victorious.

And for cash gamers, there is a $7,500 Guaranteed Pick & Pray paying down to 5th, including $3,750 to the winner – and our fun $1,500-Guaranteed three-horse Exacta Box game with the victor receiving $600. This one, like all our Exacta Box tourneys, will operate with a Live format.

As always, you may qualify to virtually any of the above tourneys through one of our low-cost feeders between now and the final event.

Lastly, we wish good luck to our five HorseTourneys qualifiers playing at Hawthorne this weekend and the 30 players we have sent to TwinSpires for their Online Championships on Saturday.

Wherever you’ll be this weekend – and whomever you’re spending it with – we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. We here at HorseTourneys are thankful for YOU!

We are only permitted to offer 2017 NHC Qualifiers through the end of November 2016. So it made things even a little more chaotic than normal when we were forced to scrap our next-to-last NHC qualifier last Sunday due to racing cancellations at Aqueduct and Woodbine. In case you haven’t already learned of new details surrounding our final NHC qualifier of the year this Sunday, November 27, I will go over them here.

The November 27 qualifier will now be run as a Live-format event, matching the format of the aborted November 27 qualifier.

The November 27 qualifier had originally been slated to guarantee two NHC packages and award up to four, based on participation. However, with the gracious consent of the NTRA, we are pleased to report that the November 27 NHC qualifier will now guarantee FIVE packages, and award up to TEN (one per 70 entries) should we reach 700 entries.

Entries in our ill-fated November 20 NHC qualifier were automatically transferred to our November 27 qualifier. If, for any reason, a player does not wish to participate on November 27, he or she may obtain a full refund of the November 20 $160 entry fee through a simple two-step process:

1) Go to the BUY ENTRIES section of our Web site and cancel the NHC entry (or entries) desired. This will refund 90% of the entry to fee to your account.

2) Email us at support@horsetourneys.com and request a refund of the cancel fees (i.e. the other 10%). A customer support representative will address your request promptly.

The November 20 cancellation was unfortunate. But, knock on wood, we think it may lead to an extraordinarily exciting finale to the HorseTourneys NHC qualifying year. Here’s how entries look so far for Saturday:

In closing, here are a few words (three, to be exact) about tourney cancellations.

We hate them.

As much or more than you do.

We hate them in part because we can’t stand inconveniencing our players. And also because we lose money on them after staff and operational costs are factored in.

But we’d rather lose money in the short-term than have even one player question the fairness of a cancellation decision. This why we have our cancellation policy clearly spelled out in the “Rules” section of our Web site:

We believe that transparency is extremely important. The worst-case scenario for us would be for players to think that a decision was arbitrary…or made because “they just want their money”…or, perhaps even worse, was based on who was leading at the time of the canceled races.

This will never happen at HorseTourneys. We also won’t hit you with seat-of-the-pants, last-minute race additions in a featured contest just to salvage the event. There’s a lot at stake in these tourneys, and we know how seriously you prepare for them. We respect that, and prefer to always take a longer-term view rather than a shorter-term one.

We value your business and sincerely appreciate your understanding when events like last Sunday’s occasionally pop up.

NFL kickers apparently can’t kick extra points in the wind. But at least they can still try. No such luck with horses and jockeys, though, and that threw our Sunday schedule — including all of our Featured events — into chaos.

Per HorseTourneys rules, we cancel any tourney that doesn’t complete 70% or more of its races. When Aqueduct nixed its full card, and then Laurel canceled after the 6th, we wound up having to abort most of our tourneys that weren’t single-track events in temperate places like Del Mar.

Finger Lakes has scrapped its Monday card and for those of you not living in the Northeast, the high winds are expected to continue pretty much through Tuesday, so we could be in for more of the same.

Fortunately the winds didn’t arrive in time to mess up our Saturday schedule.

William Roth took first money of $7,000 in our $15,000 Guaranteed game, which ran as an $1,100+ overlay to our players. It was a real blanket finish with Roger Forget just 80 cents back in second and James Caldwell just 40 cents behind Roger. Ronald McKinnon (4th place) missed a win by $2.60.

In our Horse Player World Series full-package qualifier, Mitch Prado really didn’t give others much of a chance. He missed on his first play, then picked five winners and one runner up from his next six plays. At that point, he could have afforded to take the rest of the tourney off. And he pretty much did…blanking the rest of the way. But it mattered not and he won the HPWS ($1,500 entry + four nights’ hotel at The Orleans + $500 travel) comfortably. We’ll be running these full-package games each Saturday for the next few months.

The other featured event on the Saturday schedule was our Last Chance qualifier for this Saturday’s Twin Spires Online Championships.

It was a popular tourney, and we were able to award six packages ($500 entry + $250 cash), including two to 2015 NHC Champ John O’Neil, who finished second and sixth. Hats off (wind pun intended) to winner Jon Hurd as well as to our other winners Steve Simonovich, William McKinney Jr. and Dennis Gates.

Here’s an early heads up that our final NHC qualifier of the year will take place this Sunday. Because of the recent cancellation, we are now guaranteeing FIVE NHC packages and will award up to TEN packages, based on participation. Due to pent up demand, available places in this Sunday’s NHC qualifier (to be run in live format as was supposed to be the case last weekend) are filling up very quickly. Enter now so you don’t get shut out and wind up feeling like…

Have a great week and a Happy Thanksgiving!

Friday is always a fun, early start to the weekend at HorseTourneys with our $5,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray ($2,500 to the winner). Of course, we have that game on tap for the usual $185. Contest races are set as Aqueduct’s 6th through 9th; Churchill’s 8th through 10th; and Del Mar’s 4th through 6th (10 races in all).

This Friday, though, using the same 10 races, we also have a special free VIP Exacta Box tourney (live format) for those who have played at least $7,500 lifetime on our site. You pick three horses per races (plus alternates, if you wish) and are scored based on the $1.00 exacta payoff. These games are a lot of fun and, in this case, you have nothing to lose by trying. Sign up now.

We typically offer a $12,500 Guaranteed tourney on Saturdays, but this Saturday, we have raised the stakes a bit.

This weekend’s featured cash game will offer a guaranteed pot of $15,000, with an entry fee of $195. We will pay full prizes (down to 7th place) no matter what, so keep your eye out for a possible overlay here. The winner will receive $7,000.

There is also a “Last Chance” qualifier on the Saturday schedule. It’s for the Nov. 26 Twin Spires Online Championships, set for Saturday, November 26. One of every 15 entries in this weekend’s qualifying event will receive a $500 entry fee plus $250 in cash. So even if you lose next week, you win! It’s only $58 per entry for this one.

And we’ll be hosting another Horse Player World Series Full-Package qualifier Saturday. Winners (one package awarded per each 25 entries) receive not just the $1,500 entry fee, but four nights’ hotel at The Orleans plus $500 travel.

Our three featured events listed above will all operate with a live format. Contest races still TBA.

On to Sunday…

Again, November is the final month that you can qualify for the NHC at HorseTourneys and on Sunday we’ll host our penultimate 2-seat-Guaranteed NHC qualifier of 2016 for $160. Winners of this live-format tourney receive the NHC berth, $1,000 travel and their hotel stay at Treasure Island. If participation goes beyond 210, we will award a third or even a fourth package. But we will award at least two no matter how many take part. Sunday contest races are also still TBD.

Also on the docket for Sunday is an entry-only qualifier to the Horse Player World Series. We’ll continue to offer these each Sunday (with the full-package HPWS qualifiers running on Saturdays). Entry is $87 with one winner per 20.

And Sunday has a “Last Chance” qualifier of its own this weekend. It’s for the Hawthorne Fall NHC Super Qualifier to be held Nov. 25-26. Winners (one per 15 entries) get their $700 entry covering both days, plus $500 for travel. this qualifier costs just $93.

For dyed-in-the-wool cash game players, there’s our usual $7,500 Guaranteed game on Sunday with $3,750 to the winner and prizes down to 5th. $190 gets you an entry into that one. And our $1,500 Guaranteed exacta box game ($600 to the winner) will round out our Sunday featured schedule, along with a couple of other guaranteed-payout cash events.

As most of you know, you can play your way into most of the above games via low-cost feeders between now and the actual event. And there are plenty more games (including single-track tourneys) that you can choose from as well. Plus a free Saturday tourney for those whose HorseTourneys accounts are less than 30 days old.

There’s a lot to pick from as always. Check our full schedule (right on our home page) for what looks good to you. And whichever games you play, good luck!

We’ve got a couple of fun (and free!) Exacta Box tourneys coming up this week. You’ll want to sign up for either or both, depending on your eligibility.

Our first free tourney comes up Wednesday night. We’ll be giving away a total of $160 to the top four finishers and the only eligibility requirement is that you have played at least $25 lifetime at HorseTourneys. Participation is limited to the first 500 who sign up, and the game will be a live-format exacta box event where you pick a three-horse exacta box in each race and get scored based on a $1 exacta payoff. Contest races are the 5th through 8th at Woodbine, the 7th through 9th at Delta Downs and the 4th through 6th at Remington Park.

Our other free tourney is a VIP event on Friday. It is also a live-format Exacta box game, but this one will offer a total of $310 and is for HorseTourneys customers who have played at least $7,500 lifetime. Contest races are still TBD.

Both of our free tourneys are excellent ways to get acquainted with our increasingly popular exacta box games (a HorseTourneys exclusive). Win or lose, you are sure to have fun with these as you exercise a different contest “muscle” in shooting for the top spot.

This weekend, you’ll want to keep an eye out for two “Last Chance” qualifiers.

Saturday is your final opportunity to qualify for the Nov. 26 Twin Spires Online Championships where a slew of NHC and HPWS seats will be awarded. Entry fee for our Saturday last chancer is just $58 and winners (one per each 15 entries) receive a $500 entry plus $250 in cash.

Then on Sunday, it’s the last train out for the Hawthorne Fall NHC Super Qualifier, to be held at Hawthorne on Nov. 25-26. The event in Illinois goes as two separate one-day competitions with lots of NHC seats up for grabs. Our Sunday qualifier offers winners (one per 15 entries, once again) $700 in Hawthorne entry fees (good for one entry both days) plus $500 in travel cash.

We’ll also have low-cost feeders available all week for the Twin Spires and Hawthorne qualifiers, as well as for our other big weekend games, including our Sunday 2-seats-guaranteed NHC qualifier and our Saturday and Sunday HPWS qualifiers.

So make plans to join us this week…even if you don’t feel like spending a dime! Good luck.

It was a big Pick & Pray-centric weekend here at HorseTourneys. Saturday was characterized by a number of featured tourneys in which a dollar or two either way made a significant difference in the final standings.

Our $12,500 Guaranteed tourney went to David Scharf ($6,250 first place prize) by just $1.20 over runner up Stephen Walsh. It is somewhat interesting to note that Scharf won thanks to having picked 5-2 shot Buymeabond in the contest finale at Del Mar. It is thought in some quarters that, in a Pick & Pray, it is wise to pick a longer-priced horse in order to expand the number of ways that can propel you forward. For example, a longshot winner…or even a robust place mutuel from a second-place finisher. Scharf eschewed that theory Saturday and it paid off nicely for him.

Saturday was the first day this year that we offered a full-package qualifier to the 2017 Horse Player World Series. As a result, our two winners of this tourney — Paul Mahre ($152.20) and Craig Horn ($151.10) will receive $500 travel plus four nights’ hotel at The Orleans in addition to their $1,500 HPWS entry. Look for these full-package HPWS qualifiers every Saturday in the weeks and months ahead as we march forward to HPWS 2017.

One of our regularly popular direct qualifiers, perhaps due to its easy-on-the-wallet $58 entry fee, is the Twin Spires Online Championship qualifier. This past Saturday saw three winners advance to the Nov. 26 final. They are Chris Bertolucci, Stephen Diaz and Bernardo Wiesner.

What was already shaping up as an intriguing finish to Sunday’s tourneys was made more exciting when #3 Dynamic Mizzes K ($20.40 to win, $10.00 to place) won the contest nightcap in the 7th at Del Mar.

Due to solid participation, we were able to award three packages rather than the guaranteed two in our big NHC qualifier. Finishing in first was Rick Broth with $133.50. But he was already double-qualified to the NHC. So while Rick will garner nice NHC Tour points, the NHC packages fell down to our 2nd, 3rd and 4th place finishers: Jeffrey Jolliffe ($132.70), Robert Shoemaker II ($113.20) and Mark Stovall ($108.30). Keep in mind that you only have two opportunities left this year (the next two Sundays) to win 2017 NHC spots at HorseTourneys. This week’s qualifier will again offer at least two, and as many as four, NHC berths depending on participation.

We also had a $7,500 guaranteed game on Sunday, and Rick Broth made his excellent Sunday opinions count.

Using the exact same selections that he used in our NHC qualifier, he finished first in this event, good for $3,750. Charles Browning held second over a late-closing Peter Osella.

Thanks to Dynamic Mizzes K, Timothy Jacobs was the winner in our Hawthorne Fall NHC Super Qualifier qualifier.

The big event (two separate one-day tourneys) is the weekend following Thanksgiving. That means that your last chance to qualify for this seat-rich event is next Sunday here at HorseTourneys.

Our Sunday HPWS entry-only game was a lower-scoring game compared to some of the others.

Kenneth Jordan and Mitch Prado each had Dynamic Mizzes K (as did third-place finisher Joe Koury), and so Kenneth and Mitch will be battling it out at the HPWS with a full-funded $1,500 entry next spring.

Our Sunday $1,500 guaranteed exacta box games have enjoyed increased participation lately as more and more players catch on to the fun format.

John Heiney caught a $167.90 exacta (for a buck) in the 4th at Del Mar…and he further padded his total with three other winning exactas from his three-horse box plays to take the $600 first-place money over Cruz Talamantes who also put in a very strong performance.

Lastly we offer our congratulations to Vic Stauffer who won this weekend’s Del Mar November Handicapping Challenge on the heels of a strong performance at the previous weekend’s BCBC.

You can read more about Vic’s win in yesterday’s blog or at the Del Mar website.

As you look ahead to next weekend’s featured slate of tourneys, remember that we’ll be running low-cost feeders to all of them all week long here at HorseTourneys.

Best wishes for a winning week ahead.

Courtesy of Del Mar Publicity Dept.

Vic Stauffer of Novato, CA, captured the Del Mar November Handicapping Challenge by turning his $2,500 starting bankroll into $23,375. Stauffer gained the lead in the final race with a $2,000 win bet on 4-1 Colonel Samsen. Stauffer won $38,000 in cash plus his $23,375 bankroll, as well as a $10,000 entry into the 2017 $1 million Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge (BCBC) at Del Mar. If he goes on to win the 2017 BCBC, he will receive an additional $1 million bonus.

Second place went to Paul Hughes from San Mateo, CA, with final winnings of $17,313, good for $15,000 cash, $10,000 BCBC entry and a National Handicapping Championship entry.

John Allurnario, of San Diego, CA, finished third with winnings of $16,030 earning a $10,000 BCBC entry, NHC entry and a cash prize of $5,000.

Del Mar Handicapping Challenge Final Results (starting bankroll $2,500):

1- Vic Stauffer — $23,375
2- Paul Hughes — $17,313
3- John Allurnario — $16,030
4- Mike Caposio –$10,192
5- Lee Geraghty — $15,660
6. Paul Hughes –$11,524

John Allunario also won the Day One prize, an entry into the 2017 Del Mar Summer Challenge, a $7,000 entry fee.

Friday is opening day for the Fall Meet at Del Mar. So without further ado, we want to send our best wishes to Travis Pearson, Sean Nolan, Steven Turner, Pete Acocella, Brett Wiener, Kevin Willett, Trey Stiles, Tom Michalczewski, Louis Constan, Douglas Draper and Mike Lynn. These 11 will be representing HorseTournes at this weekend’s lucrative ($4,000 entry fee) Del Mar Fall Classic. Good luck, all!

For those of us not fortunate enough to be at Del Mar, there is still plenty to do at HorseTourneys.

The weekend kicks off in earnest tomorrow with our $5,000 Guaranteed tourney that will pay pay down to 4th place, including $2,500 to the winner. It, like almost all of this weekend’s featured tourneys, will be run in Pick & Pray format. Contest races are the 7th, 8th and 9th at Aqueduct; the 4th, 5th and 6th at Del Mar; the 7th and 8th at Laurel; and the 6th and 7th at Woodbine — 10 races in all. There are also some nice, smaller guaranteed games on tap Friday.

We’ve got three key games of note on Saturday:

Regular cash tourney players won’t be surprised to see our $12,500 Guaranteed game on the schedule. It pays to 6th with $6,250 up top. Entry is $195 and full prizes will, of course, be paid regardless of participation since it is a guaranteed tourney. Contest races for this and other Saturday featured games are the 7th, 8th and 9th at Aqueduct; the 9th, 10th and 11th at Churchill Downs; the 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th at Del Mar; the 7th and 8th at Woodbine; and the 9th and 10th at Gulfstream Park West — 13 races in all.

Saturday also marks the first of what will be weekly Full-Package Horse Player World Series qualifiers. Entry fee is $116 with one winner per 25 entries. Winners will receive $500 plus a four-night hotel stay at The Orleans in addition to the $1,500 entry fee. It’s a really nice package that we’ll be offering for the next several Saturdays.

We’ll also be hosting a qualifier for the Twin Spires Online Championships (to be held on Nov. 26). There will be one winner per 15 entries at $58 each and they will receive $250 cash in addition to the $500 TSOC entry.

On to Sunday…

November is the final month that you can qualify for the NHC at HorseTourneys and on Sunday we’ll host another 2-seat-Guaranteed NHC qualifier (a Pick & Pray) for just $160. Winners receive the NHC berth, $1,000 travel and their hotel stay at Treasure Island. If participation suffices, we will award up to four packages but we will award at least two no matter how many play. Sunday contest races are still TBD.

Also slated for Sunday is an entry-only qualifier to the Horse Player World Series. We’ll continue to offer these each Sunday (with the full-package HPWS qualifiers running on Saturdays). Entry is $87 with one winner per 20.

There’s also a direct qualifier to the Hawthorne Fall NHC Super Qualifier to be held Nov. 25-26. Winners (one per 15 entries) get their $700 entry covering both days, plus $500 for travel. You can play in our qualifier for just $93.

Cash game players, fear not. We’ll host our usual $7,500 Guaranteed game with $3,750 to the winner and prizes down to 5th. $190 gets you into that one. And our $1,500 Guaranteed exacta box game on Sunday ($600 to the winner) will be one of the only featured tourneys this weekend run in a Live format (that format always seems to work better in exacta box games…what with odds fluctuations and the like).

It goes without saying that you can play your way into any of the above games via low-cost feeders between now and the big day. And there are plenty more games (including single-track tourneys) that you can choose from as well. So always be sure to review our schedule with a fine-toothed comb. There’s bound to be ones, not mentioned in this space, that hit you between the eyes.

Wherever you are, whichever games you choose, all of us at HorseTourneys wish you fun and good luck this weekend.