Surf’s up at Del Mar—which makes for a great one-two punch with Saratoga as we create tourneys and race schedules that we hope will tickle your summertime fancy.

Maybe it was the opening of Saratoga on Thursday—or maybe the Fed did something (or didn’t do something) when we weren’t paying attention—but inflation reared its ugly head here this week. From Thursday on, our sky-high prices made those at the supermarkets and gas stations look cheap. 

Whether you’re on-site or watching from home, the first weekend of Saratoga tends to put an extra spring in one’s step for people like us. For whatever reason, it’s an extra-fun time to bet—and to play contests—and we at HorseTourneys are ready to try and make an exciting weekend even more compelling with a slew of worthwhile events. The weekend features—most of them Pick & Prays this week—get rolling on Friday.

Win two big bombs win during a given tourney, and you have one of them, you’re in position to do some damage. When you have them both, the world is pretty much your oyster. That pretty much sums up Ciaran Thornton’s Saturday.

With the Lone Star Summer Betting Challenge drawing near, qualifying for the July 16th contest is drawing short. Sunday is the final weekend opportunity to earn a $1,000 entry into the on-track tournament.

Anyone who played a featured tourney on Independence Day had the misfortune of having to deal with Jim Lisowsky, Evan Trommer…or both. At least one of them was among the winners in all five Monday marquee games.

How many NHC berths are we guaranteeing on the Fourth? Four! They’re available in a special $100 Pick & Pray at HorsePlayers on Monday. 

June is not over yet, but the Month-End Blowout for it is—and that was a happy development for Gary “Macho Man” Machiz. 

Recently we made the final Saturday HT Tour event of the month a $50,000 Guaranteed tourney (instead of $30,000 Guaranteed)—while holding the line on the entry fee ($350). It’s time for another one this Saturday, and value-minded contest players should pay attention because the May renewal wound up going off with an extremely horseplayer-friendly takeout rate of 0.1 percent. As always, real-time tracking of the prize pool can be easily viewed on the right-hand side of the HorseTourneys homepage.

There were plenty of big prices floating around out there basically every day except Thursday, and since it was a “Pick & Pray weekend” here, one might have expected lots of multiple winners. That was not the case, however. A single big price can be great for a deft multi-tabler. Two or more can bring about chaos. We also had a 39-1 bomb on Sunday that, to this observer, was really hard to dope out—and not many could.