It has seldom been harder to determine whom to include in the headline of a Monday recap than this week because, by my unofficial count, 10 players collected more than grand prize this past week. 

Saturday seemed like an especially unlikely day for multiple winners. First off, six of the nine featured events were contested in Live format. Perhaps more importantly, no horse paid more than $22.60 to win, yet eight of the 12 winners paid at least $10.80 so there were countless paths to victory. And still…two players accounted for four of the day’s nine first-place finishes. One of them had an especially lucrative day.

Not to dampen the holiday mood, but Christmas falls on a Saturday this year—which means there will be no tracks open on Saturday, the 25th and only a couple (Gulfstream and Tampa) racing on Friday, the 24th. So, in essence, if you want to hunker down and fire away for cash or important contest seats, this is your last full weekend in 2021 to do that.

It’s always a noteworthy feat when a player has the skill and the courage of conviction to win multiple tourneys in a single day. It’s a far rarer occurrence when someone manages to pull such a thing off twice in one week.

But that’s what Steve Arrison did.

We contest players can sometimes be hard to buy for. Ties or socks or sweaters or jewelry are nice, but what we really love is the excitement that, often, only a lucrative handicapping tournament can provide. So why not ease the burden for your family members and buy for yourself…by winning what you really want right here this weekend?

With 33 featured tourneys this past week, we were busier than Joe Namath and Jimmie “J.J.” Walker during the last few days of Medicare Part C enrollment. We weren’t able to award any free rides to medical appointments, but we did hand out lots of cash and important contest seats to a number of skillful players. 

With six featured tourneys on Friday, nine on Saturday and 10 more on Sunday, things are going to be hopping here this weekend with upwards of 20 important contest seats and $82,500 in guaranteed cash at stake.

The players came out in force over the extended Thanksgiving weekend. None of the 28 featured tourneys failed to fill, and all of the marquee cash games comfortably exceeded their purse guarantees. And yet, perhaps the best performance of all came in the very first featured tourney of the week.

Many people rate Thanksgiving as their favorite holiday of the year. We assume that it gets the nod over Christmas because of the many competitions available at HorseTourneys on Turkey Day—including our $15,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray.

Two of this past week’s hottest players wasted no time in making their identities known. As a result, we are able to present this particular Monday recap in essentially straight, chronological order.