It’s hard to say for sure who a “Contest Player of the Year” award for 2017 might go to. A sensible choice would be Ray Arsenault for having won the NHC in the early part of the year. Christopher Dewey is the current leader, as of this writing, in the NHC Tour standings, so he could be worthy. As could Ed Peters who won The BIG One and finished second in the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge.
But if we were to present a Contest Player of the Year award for 2018, there would only be one choice.
Congratulations to Alan Bourke, Brian Knowles and (HorseTourneys qualifier) Mark McGuire. They were the winners last weekend on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, respectively at Surfside.
Congratulations to Friday, December 29 winner (and HorseTourneys qualifier) John Ukleja and Saturday, December 30 victor Paul Langley. In addition to winning an NHC seat by virtue of their respective triumphs, each is now eligible for a $1 million bonus should he go on to win the NHC in February at Treasure Island.
New Year’s Day is not known as a particularly religious holiday (even if January 1 actually is a “holy day of obligation” in the Catholic Church). Be that as it may, you can be assured that there will be a whole lot of praying going on this weekend—a lot of picking and praying, to be more precise. That’s because HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers will host a combined 18 featured tourneys during the Friday-Monday, four-day New Year’s holiday weekend, and 15 of those will be of the Pick & Pray variety.
It was a curtailed weekend of contest action by the calendar. But not really in terms of the number of featured tourneys. Heck, even our single-track Gulfstream Pool-style tourney on Sunday wound up paying out more than $10,000. So despite the Christmas holiday, there’s still a lot to catch up on.
With Christmas Eve falling on Sunday and Christmas Day on Monday, that means a compressed racing schedule. But not a subpar featured schedule at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers. Essentially, what we might have lost on Sunday, we are plowing into Friday and Saturday. The net result: 13 featured tourneys…and—in case your holiday shopping is complete—a nice assortment of Gulfstream-only tourneys on Sunday since Gulfstream is open for business that day.
For the second straight weekend, no one won more than one top prize in our featured tourneys (although one player came close). And Sunday’s action reminded us once again of both the formidable power of a well-chosen bomb…and the ways to overcome adversity when the bomb drops and you don’t have it.
Christmas falls on a Monday this year. Which means that Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday. And we’re not operating any contests on Christmas Eve (or Day). So for committed weekend warriors, this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday represents a nice chance to get a full, three-day weekend of competitions in ahead of Santa’s visit down your chimney.
Timothy Yohler finished with a bankroll of $5,297 to top a field of 43 and win the inaugural Caribbean Classic Betting Challenge at Gulfstream Park on Saturday, December 9.
From a macro sense, there were two happy contest developments that took place over the weekend. 1) We got all of our Saturday featured tourneys in. Late Friday night and early Saturday morning, that seemed far from a certainty; and 2) Of the 13 featured weekend tourneys that took place, there were 21 first-prize winners. Not that there’s anyting wrong with someone ripping three or four victories off during a weekend (and, in fact, that can make a blogger’s job a little easier), but it’s always nice to see lots of happy winners as the victories get spread around.
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