August weekends are always big at HorseTourneys and especially when they involve NHC qualifiers. But first things first.

Our Friday prelude to Saturday’s NHC bonanza comes in the form of a pair of nice, guaranteed cash games: a $5,000 multi-track game that pays to 4th and has $2,500 reserved for the winner. And a $1,000, Saratoga-races-only event paying down to 7th with $425 to the winner. Again, these games are both guaranteed, so value hawks will want to be watching entries for these two very closely.

Saturday’s highlight, of course, is our NHC qualifier with three seats guaranteed and a fourth possibly available depending on participation. Winners receive a seat, hotel plus $1,000 in travel…all for just a $160 entry fee. You won’t find a lower takeout rate/price point at any non-ADW NHC qualifying site.

There’s also a $97 live-format qualifier for a full package to the Orleans Fall Classic with winners getting a $500 entry plus $750 in travel.

Cash game specialists have two great options to pick from: our $25,000 Guaranteed game (live format) that pays down to 8th with $12,500 up top for just $260 (representing an industry-low 9.3% takeout)…and/or our $12,500 Guaranteed Pick & Pray that day for $195 that pays to 6th and reserves $6,250 for the winner.

There’s also a Pick & Pray feeder to the following day’s The BIG One qualifier for $106. One of every five players will advance to the following day’s $478 gateway game.

Here’s a more visual summary of Saturday’s prime events:

Sunday’s marquee game (as you probably surmised) is our The BIG One qualifier (a Pick & Pray). With 40 of 50 online seats already spoken for, there are now only 10 seats left to be won here for this high-expectation event at Laurel on Sept. 24-25.

Also on tap for Sunday is an entry-only, Pick & Pray qualifier to next year’s Horse Player World Series for $87.

Though cash gamers may prefer our $7,500 Guaranteed Pick & Pray game paying to 5th with $3,750 to the winner for $190…or our live-format $1,500 Guaranteed Exacta Box game where you get to pick three horses per race (a three-horse box) instead of one. This tourney carries a price point of just $54 with prizes down to 5th and $600 to the victor. As mentioned many times in the past, these exacta box games are a lot of fun. There are no price caps and you just never feel like victory is ever out of reach.

Here is an info-packed peek at some of Sunday’s top games:

We also want to give you an early heads-up that our first qualifier for the Del Mar Fall Classic will take place a week from Sunday on August 28. Winners (1 per 25) will receive a $4,000 entry plus $500 in travel reimbursement. Cost for the August 28 direct qualifier is $212 and between now and then we are running feeders to August 28 for just $47.

Whichever tourneys you choose this weekend, we wish you good fun and good racing luck!

I had the privilege of traveling North to the Battle of Saratoga last Wednesday and Thursday and back down South for the big 10-seat NHC qualifier at Monmouth on Saturday. It was a pleasure meeting so many HorseTourneys players and getting to put faces with names. Here are some impressions from the three days at the track:

Most players already know that the New York tourneys are a great deal due to New York State law, which requires that 100% of all monies taken in be returned as prizes. And this doesn’t even take into consideration tourney seats. NYRA paid for the four NHC seats and two BCBC spots out of pocket. So it was a positive expectation event for the players.

It was also a positive expectation event for manufacturers of anti-perspirant. Boy, was it sticky there. Fortunately Donny Nelson and the NYRA staff did what it could to keep people as comfortable as possible in the upper Carousel (not sure if they still call it that anymore). All in all, it was a very well-run event. There was a very low reading on the Complaint-O-Meter. Special kudos to the unsung guys who kept the water, iced tea and lemonade jugs filled at all times. I made about 35 trips there over the two days and never once came up empty. And that was with a player contingent of 205 on Wednesday and 210 on Thursday.

I heard a few grumblings about the shift to a live-bankroll format but none whatsoever about splitting the two-day tourney into a pair of one-day tourneys.

For a while there, it didn’t look like the split was going to make any difference. Incredibly, the winner of Day 1, Mark D’Amato of Green Bay, Wisc., was leading for about the first half of Day 2 as well. D’Amato’s approach was very straight forward. Win, place, show, exacta and trifecta bets were permitted and D’Amato stuck (for virtually the entire two days) with playing $60 (the typical race-to-race bet size in this contest where bankrolls started at $600) cold trifectas on a single combination. He hit 2 such plays on Wednesday to win that day, and started out hot doing the same thing Thursday before he was done in by a cold streak and some other players really stepping up their bet size on Day 2. The most successful of these plungers was Scott Carson of Publichandicapper.com. He wagered his entire bankroll of about $1,700 on Thursday’s final race, and he connected with one of his plays — a $500 cold exacta that he had envisioned as a saver. (Nice saver!)

They say it doesn’t make sense to take a knife to a gun fight. My takeaway for the two days at the Spa it might just be a good idea to take swings at the most lucrative bet types available within the rules of a given tourney (i.e. trifectas in this case) unless your bankroll is so big that you can get away with making safer plays. D’Amato obviously did this right from the get-go — eschewing the $60 water-treading show bets that many others opted for early on. His competition played, collectively, more conservatively. But they all seemed to catch on part way through Day 2 as word continued to spread about the guy crushing cold tris. Plays got bigger and bolder as it became clear that even a sizable straight bet wasn’t going to get the job done. Scott Carson’s ultimate winning play may have been on an exacta, but it was a $500 exacta — the type of play that probably wouldn’t have been feasible earlier in the day due to a combination of bankroll size and in-game strategy. The exacta return of $14,875 was plenty big enough to win the contest, but if Carson, in 15th place at the time, had only been able to afford (or only had the guts to play) a $50 or $100 unit on his exotic wagers, he too probably would have needed to opt for the trifecta.

The temperatures were even hotter, and the humidity even more oppressive on Saturday at Monmouth. Fortunately the Monmouth facility offered its players an ample choice of comfortable, air-conditioned rooms from which to play. The contest drew 166 entries, with the top 10 winning NHC seats plus cash from a prize pool. While I saw players there who hailed from coast to coast, the overall makeup of the contestants seemed a bit more casual than at Saratoga.

Only win, place and show wagers were allowed here with players (who started with a $200 bankroll) having to make at least 10 $20 plays at Monmouth and Saratoga, with at least five of those plays on Monmouth. As many of you know by now, the contest was put on its ear with the sudden announcement that Saratoga had canceled its card after the 5th race (of what was an 11-race card). By that time, Monmouth only had four races remaining.

I was tremendously impressed by the composure of the players while Monmouth officials huddled to decide what to do. Some players wanted Arlington added as a replacement track. Others felt it was fairer to just stick with Monmouth and Monmouth alone.

Ultimately Monmouth’s Brian Skirka (himself the picture of calm at all times) made what was a very well-received decision. Not wanting to hit unprepared players with a new track from out of left field, Skirka elected to just finish out the contest with Monmouth and waive the 10-play minimum as long as players had made at least five $20 Monmouth plays — which was the players’ responsibility all along and was unaffected by the Saratoga cancellation.

It was almost like one of those turbo poker tournaments where levels and blinds go up faster than normal. With so few races suddenly left, players instinctively knew that those high up the leader board now had an increased advantage. But with bet sizes now sure to increase due to a paucity of opportunities, players also knew that the three races still to come would mean a lot more than those that had already taken place.

The Monmouth main track on Saturday had a 24-karat gold rail with a bias pronounced enough that prices were hard to find. In the last race, Way to the Bank ran to his name, wiring the field from post 1 at a generous $6.80. HorseTourneys player Rob Ramirez from Ronkonkoma, NY saw the bias and put his entire $418 bankroll on Way to the Bank’s nose to win. The win boosted his winning bankroll to $1,421.70, which Rob won…along with a $9,800 first place prize and an NHC seat.

It turned out to be an excellent contest at Monmouth, but only because tournament officials and players kept cool heads and acted gracefully under pressure. There’s probably a lesson in here somewhere!

Juan Benedetti was in for $7,500 just eight days after winning at the $12,500 level. But this was no jam job…and fitness was clearly not in question.

As proof, the ultra-sharp Horse Tourneys cash game player won our $7,500 ($3,750 to the winner) Guaranteed tourney just a week and a day after winning our $12,500 Guaranteed game on Saturday, August 6. Look for Benedetti to “step up in class” for our $25,000 Guaranteed tourney coming up this Saturday, August 20.

Sunday was our last chance qualifier for Indiana Grand’s first-ever NHC tournament (they’ll be giving three seats away in Shelbyville on August 20). David Browning and Samuel Alipio were our two winners yesterday and they’ll both be heading to Indiana Grand with not one but two entries at their disposal. We wish Indiana Grand the best of luck with its event on Saturday, and hope that it becomes a regular fixture on the annual brick-and-mortar contest calendar.

The BIG One filled its 39th and 40th available seats on Sunday in our Two-Seats-Guaranteed qualifier. Ryan Steigmeier and Michael Caposio were our two top finishers and both will be heading to Laurel on a full ride on Sept. 24-25. Just 10 more seats remain available in online tourneys for this high-expectation event, so be sure to play in our The Big One qualifiers the next few Sundays.

We also held an entry-only Horse Player World Series qualifier on Sunday with the top two finishers winning seats. It, like each of the above three tourneys mentioned, was a “Live Format” tourney. The going-away winner was Vince LaRocco who posted a monster score of $124.40. Second was our The BIG One runner-up Michael Caposio and you will note that his scores in each tournament were identical — $83.80. Further investigation reveals, as you might have guessed, that Michael used the exact same picks in both tourneys.

Either Michael had outside obligations that precluded him from monitoring the tournament in real time, or he just got on a roll and figured he would stick with his first hunches throughout.

In any event, it just shows that good picks are good picks — and during those times when life inevitably gets in the way of our horseplaying, you don’t have to limit yourself to Pick & Prays. Live-format tourneys are winnable too.

Congratulations to Michael and to all of this weekend’s winners. Check in here tomorrow for musings about this past week’s Saratoga and Monmouth on-site tourneys.

It’s already been a busy and important week for tourney play. Mark D’Amato and Scott Carson won the Battle of Saratoga tourneys on Wednesday and Thursday (HorseTourneys qualifers, representing about 12% of the field, made up half the top 10 on Wednesday and accounted for runner up Paul Shurman on Thursday). On Saturday, Monmouth will award 10 NHC seats and Hawthorne has a tourney of its own on Saturday-Sunday. But there’s also plenty of action this weekend to be had online.

It kicks off in earnest on Friday with a $5,000 Guaranteed game that closes at 3:48 pm ET. $2,500 will go to the winner and prizes are paid down to 4th. Contest races are Saratoga 6th through 10th, Woodbine 7th through 9th and Laurel 8th and 9th (10 races in all). Be aware, though, that less than a handful of spots remain open. So if you’re interested, act fast. Entry is $185.

Saturday’s “feature” is our $25,000 Guaranteed game with payments down to 8th place, including $12,500 to the winner. This one is $260 to enter and, again, this tourney is guaranteed to run and to pay full prizes. Contest races for this event (and all featured multi-track events on Saturday) are Saratoga 6th through 11th, Arlington 6th through 10th (it’s Million Day!) and Monmouth 8th and 9th — a robust 13 races in all.

We’ll also host our increasingly popular Saturday $2,000 Guaranteed exacta box tourney, which you can enter for just $42. It pays down to 5th with the winner receiving $750. There’s also a direct qualifier for the Orleans Fall Classic ($97), awarding entry and $750 travel per every 15 entries.

Last but not least, we’ll also be hosting a feeder for Sunday’s The BIG One direct qualifier. This one is a Pick & Pray for $106 with one of every five participants winning a $478 seat to Sunday’s event. Here’s an at-a-glance look at some of Saturday’s biggest tourneys:

So now you know about Sunday’s The BIG One event. Two packages are guaranteed on Sunday and keep in mind that just 12 seats remain available to be won online. The BIG One, a live-money event for the first time this year, will take place at Laurel on Sept. 24-25 and offer 10 NHC seats, 8 BCBC berths, 10 Horse Player World Series (HPWS) entries plus a cash prize pool of up to $200,000 (based on qualifying participation). There will be a maximum of 57 entries at The BIG One, which should be one of the real high-expectation events of the year.

Also on Sunday is an entry-only HPWS qualifier for $87, a $7,500 Guaranteed tourney for $190 with $3,750 to the winner and payments down to 5th place, and your very last chance to qualify for the August 20 Indiana Grand NHC qualifier. This is the first-ever NHC qualifier at Indiana Grand, and they are awarding three NHC seats. All HorseTourneys qualifiers receive not one but two entries to the Indy Grand event. This should be a great opportunity to win an NHC seat and/or rack up some valuable on-site NHC Tour points.

Here’s a visual on the top Sunday tourneys:

As much of the nation battles high temperatures this weekend, here’s hoping you beat the heat — and your tourney opponents — wherever you happen to be playing. Good luck!

With Saratoga and Del Mar in full swing, it’s a given that things were hopping at HorseTourneys this past weekend.

Our big event on Saturday was our 3-seat NHC tourney, run in the All-Optional format whereby players make 10 plays from among 20 eligible contest races. The red hot Shawn Turner finished first. But he had already garnered two NHC entries, so he was competing essentially just for the NHC Tour points. The NHC seats, themselves, went to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th-place finishers, Ty Alexander, Dennis Klein and Pete Manzo.

Saturday was our last chance to qualify for this week’s Battle of Saratoga, which is being conducted for the first time this year as two single-day tournaments. Our winners were Trey Stiles, Steve Arrison, Chris Dewey and Frank Foss. We thank all the players for their outstanding participation in these Saratoga qualifiers. Since starting these tourneys (the first ever to offer seats at a Saratoga tournament), we managed to send no fewer than 26 to Saratoga with full, 2-day packages that included a generous $750 in travel. I’ll be in Saratoga this week and hope to meet all 26 of you!

While Saturday represented a last chance for Saratoga, it represented a first chance to qualify for one of the stalwart tournaments on the schedule — the Horse Player World Series. William Payseno and Wayne Tam rode the parimutuel power of longshot Paola Queen (Test Stakes at Saratoga) to victory. Look for HPWS tourneys pretty much every weekend between now and next March.

Saturday also featured a pair of popular cash games. Our $12,500 Guaranteed game went to Juan Benedetti who tabbed not just Paola Queen but four other winners to grab the $6,250 first place prize. And Paola Queen was also a prominent part of our $2,000 Guaranteed exacta box game. Rick Vasquez correctly picked the Paola Queen-Lightstream exacta (it paid $289.50 for $1) to win the $750 first place money. This was hardly the highlight of the day for Vasquez, though. He also finished second that day in the prestigious Wynn Handicapping Challenge, earning $45,000 and an NHC seat. Congratulations, Rick!

The Sunday headliner was our The BIG One qualifier. There weren’t a lot of longshots winning on Sunday so the standings were tight. In the end, it was Nicholas Fazzolari and Gary Johnson who captured the two guraranteed full packages (from just 29 entries). Be aware…there are only 12 more seats available to The BIG One. So if you haven’t already earned one, be sure to keep playing each Sunday at HorseTourneys. We also have feeders during the week.

Our $7,500 Guaranteed game was another tight affair. Here it was Matthew Whitaker who took the crown (and the $3,750 top prize).

One of the top scores posted anywhere on Sunday at HorseTourneys was the $119.30 registered by Ryan Scharnowske in winning a double-entry to the August 20 Indiana Grand NHC qualifier. Scharnowske really demonstrated the power of multiple entries in a tournament. He controlled three of the 17 entries in this particular tourney, and while his first two didn’t make much noise, the horses he opted for in entry #3 really got him where he needed to be (and then some!) For the $123 cost of three entries, Scharnowske won $350 in entry fees, and now has a shot at one of the three NHC seats on offer at Indy Grand on August 20.

There were a pair of Last Chance contests on Sunday. Ryan Leeper shot out to a nice lead, then held on late to take our full package to next weekend’s Hawthorne tournament. And Douglas Schenk prevailed by a dime to win the Last Chance Monmouth qualifier over Anthony Kite and…Anthony Kite.

Schenk also took the exact same picks he used in the Monmouth tourney and entered them in our first-of-the-year qualifier for the Orleans Fall Classic. Smart move. This time, Schenk only managed second place. But that was more than good enough for an Orleans package. Look for Schenk at the Alligator Bar this fall along with winner Wayne Kwan and 3rd-place finisher Phil Cleek.

Congratulations to all of this weekend’s winners. And the very best of luck to all our HorseTourneys qualifiers playing this week at Saratoga, Monmouth and Hawthorne.

Now that the calendar has flipped to August, the action only intensifies at HorseTourneys.

While we wish good luck to everyone out at the Wynn this weekend (including the defending champ…our own McKay Smith!), there’s still a plethora of action to be found right here.

Our big game on Friday is a $5,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray tourney (most of our big games this weekend are Pick & Prays) that has an entry fee of $185. Contest races are already up. They are Saratoga 6th through 10th, Monmouth 7th and 8th and Woodbine 5th through 7th.

Saturday should be a doozy. Our marquee event is an All-Optional NHC qualifier with 3 packages guaranteed and up to 5 available, depending on participation.

Please note that this is a LIVE format game. Twenty contest races have been selected and from there, you pick the 10 you like best. Eligible contest races for this game are Saratoga 4th through 11th; Monmouth 5th, 6th, 10th and 11th; Woodbine 8th through 10th; and Del Mar 3rd through 7th. Entry on Saturday is just $180 and we are running feeders ahead of then. This format is great for those who like to cast a little wider net than what is typically allowed in online tourneys.

We’ll also have a direct feeder for the following day’s (Sunday’s) The BIG One qualifier. The Pick & Pray feeder costs $106 and features the following 10 races: Saratoga 7th through 11th; Del Mar 3rd and 5th; Woodbine 8th through 10th; and Gulfstream 9th and 11th. Winners have a shot at the two Guaranteed The BIG One packages up for grab on Sunday. Keep in mind that only 14 spots are left in that Sept. 24-25 tourney at Laurel with cash and contest seats galore.

There is even less time to qualify for the Battle of Saratoga on August 10-11. In fact, Saturday is your LAST chance to qualify for it! We already have 22 players going to play in each of the two single-day contests there, and we want to add several more to that roster. Saturday’s game is another Pick & Pray for $128 with 1 full package per 25 players. Contest races are the same as those for The BIG One feeder above.

Though time is winding down until the Battle of Saratoga, we’re just getting started on Saturday with the Horse Player World Series. Our FIRST qualifier for the 2017 event is Saturday. Again it’s a Pick & Pray with the same races as in the above two paragraphs. It’s just $87 to play and we’ll be awarding one $1,500 seat per every 20 entries. We already have 35 entries so at least two seats are a safe bet.

Tournament seats not your thing? There are still good options for you on Saturday. There’s our $12,500 Guaranteed game with $6,250 to the winner and prizes down to 4th. That one (Pick & Pray, of course) is $195 to play and full prizes will be paid regardless of participation. Plus there is also our young-but-growing $2,000 exacta box game with $750 to the victor and payments down to 5th. This one is a LIVE format event. Here is a link to a blog earlier this week mentioning some of the charms of these three-horse exacta box games: ow.ly/ziNF302R3pq

Keep an eye out for our $25,000 Guaranteed game NEXT Saturday. In the meantime, here’s an at-a-glance look at our six pack of big games THIS Saturday:

On to Sunday…

Sunday is our aforementioned The BIG One qualifier. Win a seat, plus travel, plus hotel plus all the trappings of one of the year’s great brick-and-mortar events. Two packages are guaranteed in this Pick & Pray event, and this is one that value-conscious players will definitely want to keep an eye on.

There’s also a $7,500 Guaranteed cash game, Pick & Pray again, for $190. The winner gets $3,750 and money goes down to 5th place.

And there are a pair of Last Chance qualifiers to be sure to make on Sunday: a full-package qualifier for Monmouth and a full-package game for Hawthorne. Both are Pick & Prays offering one package per 15 players. You can enter the Monmouth game for $77 and the Hawthorne affair for $100. The Jersey Shore is nice at this time of the year. And so is Chicago. Decide where you want to spend next weekend and act (and pick and pray) accordingly.

There’s also a very reasonably-priced $41 qualifier for the first-ever NHC qualifier at Indiana Grand on Aug. 20. Each HorseTourneys qualifier (1 per every 10 participants) gets not one, but two entries into the Indy tournament that will offer 3 NHC seats.

We’ll close our weekend highlights out with a First Chance to qualify for the October 13-15 Orleans Fall Classic. This is the first of several opportunities to win a full package to the Fall Classic…but why not jump on it now before others have picked up the scent?

Here’s a quick look at Sunday’s big menu:

Whether you prefer guarantees, first chances, last chances or something in between, we wish you the best of luck in all of your contest endeavors this weekend at HorseTourneys.

We are proud at HorseTourneys to be the only tournament site out there offering exacta box contests. Our strong and avid customer base gives us the confidence to experiment a bit in creating new formats that we believe at least a portion of our players will like. And our very capable and nimble Technical Department is fine with utilizing multiple page layouts and mechanics from tourney to tourney. HorseTourneys.com strives not to be a one-size-fits-all Website.

For those who haven’t tried one yet, the rules are very simple and intuitive. Instead of picking one horse per race for a mythical $2.00 win and place bet, you pick a three-horse exacta box. If you win, your score is credited with the full return on a $1.00 exacta box play. There is no price cap on exacta payoffs, and players have the option of selecting an alternate horse to be used in case one of the three main horses in your selection winds up being a late scratch. If a player doesn’t specify an alternate in a race in which one of his three horses is replaced, he is assigned the post time favorite to replace the scratched horse. (Or the second-favorite, if the post-time favorite was already among his original three in the exacta box.)

One of the most obvious appeals to exacta box contests is the ability to spread a bit. You don’t have to take a stand with a longshot — or with a short-priced favorite. You can use them both (plus one other) and still have a shot at a very nice payoff if you’re right. And this is where strategy comes in. Is this a race that looks like it can be locked up by using the first three choices? Is the favorite formidable but attempting to separate the rest of the field gives you a headache? Or does it shape up as an absolute chaos race that would have 10 different winners if it were run 10 different times?

These questions are part of what makes exacta box tourneys so much fun. But I touched on another reason earlier in this blog: No cap!

Do you see a 45-1 shot that you think is completely live? You can use him and get 100% full value on your contest score if he makes the exacta. No haircuts!

Of course, your strategy or approach can (and probably should) change somewhat from one exacta box tourney to another depending on whether you are playing a winner-take-all game, a 50-player game paying out to the top five finishers, or one of our many head-to-head games. (And all of the above come in both Live and Pick & Pray formats.)

Boxing the top three choices in every race probably won’t win you many 50-person tourneys. But it could be an effective strategy in a head-to-head in the hopes that your opponent’s more daring picks will give him just enough rope with which to hang himself. (Whether playing $2.00 win/place or the exacta box format, it is a fact of head-to-head life that you don’t have to necessarily be good…you just need to be less bad!)

If you haven’t tried an exacta box tournament yet, I heartily encourage you to play in one of our $8 games and dip your toe into the water. You might find that you really like it. Or you might hit upon a strategy that works really well for you and could make you dangerous in higher-stakes tourneys. Sometimes the biggest edges are to be had in games that haven’t quite found their way to the masses yet.

And even if you abhor the concept of exactas and think that all racetracks should go back to the 1940s when all you could play were win, place and show and the daily double (just one daily double, of course, on races 1 and 2…hence the adjective “daily”), I still think you should consider playing our $42 exacta box game on Saturdays. Why? The $2,000 purse for those are guaranteed and they don’t often sellout. The last two have run with player overlays of 25% (two weeks ago) and 20% (last week).

You’re not going to find better value than that anywhere. And you’ll only find exacta box contests right here at HorseTourneys.

Sometimes just one horse can get you where you want to be in a tournament. That was the case on both days of the just-completed July 30-31 weekend, though the two days had somewhat different complexions.

To have much chance at success on Saturday, it was a good idea to play the maiden Laoban in Saratoga’s Race 10, the Jim Dandy Stakes. Laoban paid $42.00 to win (for contest purposes with the 20-1 win cap in effect) and $17.20 to place. There were only six horses in the Jim Dandy, which means that plenty of players in our tourneys had him. And there were three tournament races that followed Laoban’s upset — leaving the final results of our games largely dependent on how players did AFTER hitting Laoban.

For Michael Sussman, Laoban was the first winner he had all day. But he then nailed the next two as well, including Del Mar 12-1 shot Conquest Cobra. His “turkey” won him the $7,000 top spot in our $15,000 Guaranteed game.

Ronald Peltz and Robert Gilbert each tabbed Laoban and Conquest Cobra, and that was sufficient to put them at the top of the heap in our Monmouth qualifier. They’ll both be heading to the Jersey Shore on August 13.

Laoban was also a veritable “must have” in Saturday’s Wynn Blowout, which offered five entries to the $200,000 guaranteed tournament next weekend in Las Vegas. Saturday’s “Wynn 5” were Mark Streiff, Lynn McGuire, David Browning, Joshua Chavez and Geoffrey Schutt.

And in our $2,000 Guaranteed Exacta Box game (which went off at a handsome overlay of nearly 20% to the players), the Laoban-Governor Malibu exacta was one of five winning exactas registered from among 12 mandatory plays by J. Streve, whose HorseTourneys account is now $750 higher.

Sunday was all about Snow Cloud (IRE) in Del Mar’s 6th race…and not just because the 41-1 shot paid the maximum contest prices of $42.00 to win and $22.00 to place.

Del Mar’s 6th race was the last race of our multi-track contests on Sunday, most of which were Live Format affairs. If you didn’t have Snow Cloud, there were no races left from which to make up your deficit.

So congratulations to our two The BIG One package winners, Dan Flanigan and Robert Schintzius Jr. And to our five Battle of Saratoga winners: Anthony Kite, Jonathon Kinchen, Ed Sehon, Lucas Van Zandt and Paul Shurman (we already have a HorseTourneys roster of 22 two-day package qualifiers to Saratoga, and that number will grow with our Last Chance Spa Tourney this Saturday). Three cheers for Chuck Browning, the winner of $3,750 in our $7,500 Guaranteed Sunday game. Congrats also to John Northern who won a package to Hawthorne and to David Brownfield and Bill Zvara, who won two entries each to Indiana Grand’s first-ever NHC qualifier later this month.

What did all 11 have in common? You guessed it. They all had Snow Cloud.