It’s one of the most exciting weekends of the year, and given how intensely so many of us will be playing the races, what better time to channel some of that intensity to the many great events set for Friday, Saturday and (yes, even) Sunday at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers?

Obviously this Friday is no ordinary Friday. It’s Kentucky Oaks Day (a quasi-official holiday if you live in greater Kentuckiana) and a pretend-holiday if you live anywhere else.

Our major competition of the day is over at HorsePlayers where we’ll be hosting our second big NHC/BCBC Combo qualifier. Win this Pick & Pray and you win a seat to both! Win this and your Kentucky Derby day may seem anti-climactic even if you hit the Derby Superfecta. It’s $344 to play and one (double) prize is guaranteed regardless of participation. Contest races for this and our other featured Friday tourneys are the 8th through 13th at Churchill and the 4th, 6th, 7th and 9th from Belmont. Sign ups close at 2:53 pm ET.

Of course, there’s a nice Friday menu at HorseTourneys too.

We’ll have our usual $7,500 Guaranteed Pick & Pray with prizes down to fifth place and $3,750 to the victor with an entry fee of $190. There’s also $2,500 live-format game if live is more your Oaks-Day thing with the winner receiving $1,250. And with big fields the order of the day on Friday, we’ve tossed in a $500 exacta game that’s just $46 to play with the winner earning $350.

And since some of you will be laser-focused strictly Churchill Friday and Saturday, we will have a slew of Churchill-only games each day. Friday’s Churchill-only games cover races 4-11 and on Derby Day, the Churchill-only tourneys will be comprised of races 5-12. Do keep in mind that Churchill starts its card each day at 10:30 am ET (7:30 am PT), so these Churchill-only games will get under way early.

Speaking of Derby Day…

Our biggie is our $50,000 Guaranteed event (live format), paying $22,500 to the winner and prizes down to 12th place. It costs $495 to play with entries capped at 112. Contest races for this and other Saturday featured games are the 7th through 12th at Churchill and the 5th through 10th at Belmont. The Kentucky Derby will be the final race of the featured tourneys.

We also have an NHC qualifier at HorseTourneys with three seats guaranteed and, if participation warrants it, we’ll add a fourth or fifth seat. But there will be at least three, no matter what. This one carries an entry fee of $165.

There’s also a qualifier for the Gold Coast Summer Classic on tap. Winners (one per each 20 entries) receive a $1,000 package ($500 entry plus $500 travel).

And in addition to our big $50,000 Guaranteed game, we’ve mixed in some smaller featured cash games including a $2,500 competition with $1,250 to the winner and a $1,500 Guaranteed game that costs just $12 to play. (I’m guessing you can’t even buy a Mint Julep at Churchill Downs for $12!)

Not surprisingly, there’s a big game at HorsePlayers on Saturday as well…

…a 1-seat-guaranteed Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge tourney (live format) with an entry fee of $179. Contest races are the same as those for the HorseTourneys Featured games.

We hope you have plenty of energy (and money) left by Sunday, because there are many worthwhile tourneys to play. Why not take some shots at a time when much of the competition is experiencing a Derby hangover?

HorsePlayers will lead on Sunday with a live-format, 2-seat-guaranteed NHC qualifier (races TBA) with an entry fee of $165.

Back here at HorseTourneys…

…we’ll have a Sunday, one-seat-guaranteed qualifier to The BIG One for $390. The winner receives an all-inclusive package to Laurel in late September and becomes eligible for our The BIG One -NHC $500,000 lump-sum bonus.

There are three other important qualifiers on Sunday: you can play for a seat to the Monmouth Pick Your Prize tournament (entry fee: $116), the Wynn Handicapping Challenge (also $116), and the Treasure Island Wager to Win tournaments (you guessed it, $116).

On the cash front, Sunday features a $10,000 Guaranteed game with entries (capped at 57) available for $195. And it goes without saying that, as sure as the 2017 Derby winner’s name will be painted somewhere at Churchill Downs, we will be offering our Sunday $1,500 Guaranteed Exacta game with $600 to the winner. It’s very nice to see these exacta games gaining popularity each week. Just be sure to enter early to avoid being shut out.

We wish all of you a fun and successful Derby weekend—especially those who will be representing HorseTourneys at the Kentucky Derby Betting Championship. Good luck!

Earlier this week, I heard a horse racing pundit assess the chances of one of the Kentucky Derby outsiders by saying, “This is one of the few that I really can’t see as a win candidate, but I’ll definitely be using him in my superfectas, tris and possibly exactas.”

Really?

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One of the most accomplished contest players in the world, two-time NHC runner-up Roger Cettina of Rumson, N.J., put on an impressive, simultaneous display at HorsePlayers and HorseTourneys on Sunday to win himself an NHC seat and a $10,000 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge entry.

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It’s one of those weekends on the racing calendar that marks time in our heads even if we don’t know the precise dates. It’s the weekend that Belmont Park (Friday) and Churchill Downs (Saturday evening) open. And we have a bevy of important tournaments to properly commemorate the “weekend-before-Derby-weekend”.

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Until further notice, HorseTourneys will not be including races run at The Stronach Group-owned racetracks in cash-game tournaments (contests that exclusively award cash prizes). We will continue to include races run at The Stronach Group tracks in feeders and qualifiers to industry-sponsored events, and we hope to again offer them in cash tournaments at some point in the future. We do, however, expect to include Pimlico races in our cash tournaments on Preakness Day, May 20.

Saturday and Sunday played out in entirely different ways at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers last weekend. On Saturday, the bulk of the rich prizes were won by a coterie of four. On Sunday, the in-the-money finishes were spread around like trophies at a youth soccer picnic.

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Sunday belonged to the Easter Bunny but Saturday belonged to Darryl Lacy.

Taking an aggressive, multi-table approach even though it was a live-format weekend, Lacy signed up for two entries in each of six different featured tourneys—and entered the same two sets of picks in all six contests. One of his entries accumulated only about $30…no good. But his other garnered a very solid $84.20.

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The big HorseTourneys news of the week is that the winner of this year’s The BIG One will now be eligible for a $500,000 bonus should he or she win the NHC. It’s the second significant bonus announced this year by HorseTourneys. The other was a $10,000 site credit bonus should any HorseTourneys qualifier go on to win the Del Mar Handicapping Challenge. And—sure enough—we have direct qualifiers coming up on Sunday for both The BIG One and the Del Mar Handicapping Challenge.

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