By Najja Thompson, NYRA
On Friday, August 10 and Saturday, August 11, the New York Racing Association hosted the Saratoga Challenge and the Fourstardave Challenge live money handicapping tournaments, offering a total of over $225,000 in cash prizes as well as two qualifying seats to the 2019 Belmont Stakes Challenge and 8 seats to the 2019 National Horseplayers Championships in Las Vegas.
As the summer racing schedule moves on to Alabama-Pacific Classic weekend, HorseTourneys is ready with 14 featured tournaments that—with just one exception—are all Pick & Pray competitions. So if you like the “set-it-and-forget-it” nature of Pick & Prays, this is a great weekend for you.
It was a live-format weekend for the most part at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers. That often serves as an impediment to players winning multiple tourneys—but not this week.
Live-format tourneys are the order of the day this coming weekend that will see no fewer than 18 featured tourneys contested. With Saratoga and Del Mar in full swing, it should be another exciting—not to mention, lucrative—three days.
Stephen Curtin loves playing tournaments, but between his job as a grocery industry consultant and taking his 12- and 9-year-old boys to baseball and hockey games almost every weekend, the Quincy, Mass., resident really doesn’t have time to travel to onsite handicapping contests. So the 51-year-old largely sticks to cash games at HorseTourneys.
It’s an uncommon feat to win featured tourneys on consecutive days. It’s pretty much unheard of to sweep the weekend’s two major cash games. Stephen Curtin of Quincy, Mass., did just that last weekend, earning a total of $24,911 in featured Pick & Prays worth $40,000 and $15,539, respectively on Saturday and Sunday.
One of the biggest days on the mid-summer racing schedule comes up on Saturday as the Whitney Stakes and West Virginia Derby cards provide a veritable smorgasbord of stakes. Our Saturday featured schedule, therefore, offers nothing but stakes races on the 12-race syllabus. Solve these races and you could win big money in our special $40,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray (with no limit as to how high the purse can grow) or a $3,500 package to the Spa in our Last Chance Saratoga qualifier.
It’s always exciting when a tourney’s result comes down to the last race. It’s also interesting anytime we offer a brand new event. On Sunday, we got the best of both worlds with our $20 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge direct qualifier at HorsePlayers.
If your goal—or your best-case-scenario—is to qualify for the NHC or Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge…but to do so on a budget, then this is a great week for you to be playing at HorseTourneys/HorsePlayers.
While many HorseTourneys regulars enjoy both live-format and Pick & Pray games, some prefer one format or the other. This past weekend, it was the Pick & Pray format’s turn to preside over most of the featured action. On Friday, one of the most ardent supporters of Pick & Prays reminded us yet again of his prowess in these competitions.
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