High-stress, big-money tournaments are not normally Riley Drexler’s milieu.

“Seeing so many impressive names on the leaderboard…” the Chicago resident said, his voice trailing off. “To say I was nervous would be an understatement.”

It’s hard to play more consistently well over a two-day period than Riley “The Glide” Drexler did last weekend in the second annual Players Championship.

Saturday and Sunday, HorseTourneys will host the second annual Players Championship, a two-day, All Optional Live competition in which contestants make 15 mythical $2.00 win-and-place selections each day from among 30 eligible contest races. The purse is guaranteed to be at least $350,000. Last year, in the inaugural edition of the Players Championship, Dan Wilde of Cedar Park, Tex., won $213,000 from an overall prize pool of over $555,000.

Every now and then, you stumble upon a horse you want to root for just because of the name. Many would say that one such example is Good Bye Putin. The Santa Anita-based runner didn’t just make $2 hunch bettors smile with his 15-1 victory in Sunday’s 6th race, he also delivered big rewards to several HorseTourneys contestants —most notably Shawn Turner.

In honor of Florida Derby Day, our featured Saturday cash tourney (which serves as that day’s HT Tour competition) will have its purse guarantee bumped up $15,000 to $45,000. The entry fee will remain at its customary $350, so the cost to play is the same…we just feel comfortable upping the guarantee on what figures to be a big day.

By now, we’re sort of used to seeing players successfully double down (or triple down) on their picks across multiple events on a given afternoon—and it’s certainly nice to be amply rewarded when it turns out to be “our day.”

It’s Dubai World Cup Day on Saturday, and while those races take place too early in the day (for us) to include in our Saturday multi-track schedules, we’ve included the final eight of the nine races on the program in a special, single-track, $10,000 Guaranteed, No Limit Pick & Pray.  (The one race we’ll be leaving out is Meydan race 1, an Arabian race.)

Even though the Saturday and Sunday featured tourneys were conducted mainly in Live format, multiple winners were once again in ample supply. For the second straight week, only Thursday (when there are only a pair of marquee games) failed to generate at least a double grand-prize winner. 

One of the best contests in which to win an NHC spot is the Lone Star Million Betting Challenge held on Memorial Day each year at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, Tex. This year’s event falls on May 30th, and eight seats to the 2023 NHC are guaranteed. That works out to a winning ratio of 1-per-10.

With most of the week’s features operated as Pick & Prays, and lots of featured tourneys on the menu, conditions were ripe for aggressive and skillful multi-tablers to rack up a string of victories.