Different households deal with staying home all day in various ways. For the Wiener family in Clearwater, Fla., it has apparently been one long game of “Can You Top This?”
This weekend’s featured schedule looks a lot like last weekend’s featured schedule. Not surprising, I suppose, since everything seems on a bit of a holding pattern right now. Not everything is static here at HorseTourneys, however. We hope to have news shortly about new track offerings from Australia…and we already have news about a purse increase in one of our most popular events.
The workweek has taken on a decidedly different feel of late, but Wednesdays are still the humpday in the Monday-to-Friday continuum. Typically, it is just a day to get through and get past…but not for James Henry.
I’m not sure how religious it is, but we here at HorseTourneys are celebrating Easter/Passover weekend with 19 featured events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In fact, the Easter holiday will bring about a special change in our Sunday schedule. More on that later. First…on to Friday!
Beginning Thursday, April 9, new scoring parameters for the recently-introduced POINTS-BASED scoring will be in place.
Why are we making this change?
After two months of observation, it has become clear to us that the previous parameters overvalued short-priced horses to a degree that we felt was unacceptable. That we would make changes was expected, as we had assumed that some tweaking of the parameters would be necessary. We wanted a good look at the data and trends before making any changes.
While the intent of this format still remains in rewarding consistency, we felt bonus points needed to be increased, so that players picking horses other than the most likely winners were rewarded.
It’s important to point out that the ROI component of the points-based system is still far from that of the standard $2 Win/Place format, so players can still be assured that consistency in selecting winners will still be the primary factor. But, we believe that winners will now exhibit a greater mix of prices. The new parameters are as follows:
WIN/PLACE SHOW POINTS (Unchanged):
WIN: 100 points
PLACE: 50 points
SHOW: 30 points
WIN BONUS POINTS (based on final WIN payout):
any up to $4.00: 0 points
$4.01 to $6.00: 0 points
$6.01 to $8.00: 24 points
$8.01 to $10.00: 36 points
$10.01 to $14.00: 48 points
$14.01 to $20.00: 60 points
$20.01 to $32.00: 84 points
$32.01 and up: 96 points
PLACE BONUS POINTS (based on final PLACE payout):
any to $3.00: 0 points
$3.01 to $4.00: 9 points
$4.01 to $5.00: 12 points
$5.01 to $7.00: 18 points
$7.01 to $9.00: 24 points
$9.01 to $12.00: 30 points
$12.01 to $15.00: 42 points
$15.01 and up: 48 points
These weekend recaps normally cover the Friday/Saturday/Sunday featured action. However, I’ve decided to now include Wednesday in these summaries for two main reasons:
1. We now have some pretty impressive Wednesday offerings—including NHC and Spa & Surf qualifiers.
2.If you’re like me, being home all the time makes it hard to keep the days of the week straight anyway. So why discriminate?
If you’ve been enjoying the online-tourney action during this otherwise quiet period for sports—but you wish that there was something to play at night, we have two words for you: “No worries.”
It wound up being another Friday without featured tourneys. Last week it was Laurel that unexpectedly shut down on Friday morning. This past Friday, Santa Anita had to take an involuntary “pause” just 40 minutes prior to its first race. Featured tourneys continued, though, on Saturday and Sunday—and there were even a few (for the first time) on a Wednesday.
Six guaranteed NHC seats, three Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge entries and at least $53,500 in cash are just some of the prizes guaranteed to be awarded this weekend across five featured tourneys on Friday, another five on Saturday and 10 on Sunday. We’ll start at the beginning…with Friday.
In recent weeks, some players have been hogging tourney victories as if they were rolls of toilet paper. (I’m looking at you, Stephen Thompson.) That was not the case last weekend as 24 grand prizes (across 15 featured events) went to 24 different people. Unfortunately, none of that winning took place on Friday.
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