We’ve been champing at the bit to offer them, so we’re guessing some of you have been champing at the bit to play them. And now they’re here—our first qualifiers for one of the most anticipated racetrack tournaments of the year: the Saratoga Challenges.
We were back to predominantly Pick & Prays during the weekend of June 30-July 2. And, not too surprisingly, we saw a couple of players parlay one good score into multiple victories.
The Fourth of July is approaching on Tuesday, but we’ll be starting our fireworks early with 17 featured tourneys at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers on Friday, Saturday and Sunday—including no fewer than 11 on Sunday, July 2. And two of those Sunday contests will represent your first chance to qualify for the July 8 Stars & Stripes Challenge at Belmont and the September 16 Woodbine Mile Handicapping Tournament.
My favorite part of last week’s Royal Ascot coverage on NBC Sports Network came on Saturday, the final day of the five-day meeting, when cameras took us inside the stewards’ meeting to determine whether a foul had occurred during the stretch run of the Diamond Jubilee Stakes.
On a weekend featuring predominantly live-format featured tourneys, typical format tendencies held up insofar as the winners were well spread out among the 16 top competitions. But there’s an exception to every rule and last weekend’s exception was Karl Barth.
The upcoming weekend packs a solid 1-2 punch with seven featured tourneys on Saturday and eight slated for Sunday. However, one could argue that the most anticipated tourney of the weekend will take place on Friday over at HorsePlayers.
Thanks in part to an outstanding response to our $75,000 Guaranteed cash game on Belmont Stakes Day, June 10, HorseTourneys will come back quickly with another $75,000 Guaranteed event on July 22—opening Saturday at both Saratoga and Del Mar—and HorseTourneys will follow that up with a $100,000 Guaranteed tourney on Travers Day, Saturday, August 26.
When Belmont ended its Saturday card after three races due to wet conditions, it did a number on our Father’s Day eve featured schedule. Fortunately our weekend schedule was fairly well backloaded to help celebrate the Dads out there. And so there were still a dozen featured tourneys this past weekend—and they showcased a dozen different winners.
You don’t need to be a dad to love Father’s Day at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers. But if you are a dad, just tell your family that you only want two things for Father’s Day: peace and quiet. Then fire up your computer and play to your heart’s content. There are no fewer than 10 significant Sunday games—and some very nice ones on Friday and Saturday as well.
It may not have been the greatest Belmont Stakes of all time. But from purely a tournament perspective, it was a pretty darned good renewal with its large, hard-to-separate field and no scary looking favorite. It was a terrific race to serve as the climax of a lucrative bunch of contests—especially for our $75,000 Guaranteed tourney.
