It’s opening weekend at Santa Anita, and that doesn’t just mean a Last Chance qualifier for Saturday’s Santa Anita Opening Weekend at Xpressbet…it means an inordinate number of high-quality stakes races as Breeders’ Cup preps start to really kick in.

Jorge Cruz-Aedo was second in the HT Tour standings heading into this past weekend. Look for the Texan to improve his position.

Cruz-Aedo is a fine handicapper any day of the week, but he seems to be especially good on Saturdays! This past Saturday, he won $15,193 for taking the day’s $30,000 Guaranteed Pick & Pray (final pot came to $33,762).

Though the ink is barely dry on Ken Seeman’s $74,000 winner’s check and on the $6,000 Pegasus entry he won for capturing last weekend’s The BIG One, it is time to look forward to HorseTourneys’ next “major” competition, the $250,000 Guaranteed Flo-Cal Faceoff (featuring two days of mandatory, full-card selections on Gulfstream and Santa Anita racing) here on January 8th and 9th.

The BIG One has always been one of Ken Seeman’s very favorite tournaments. He has participated in all but two of them.

“It’s a small field in a big contest world,” he said. “You don’t have players throwing bombs left and right. And I really enjoyed playing it at Laurel with the camaraderie of that smaller group down there.”

One of the most respected competitors in the contest world, Ken Seeman of Wantagh, N.Y., added another entry to his impressive resume last weekend by capturing the 2021 renewal of The BIG One, which was held online at HorseTourneys for a second consecutive year.

With the top 15 players sharing in a cash prize pool currently at $159,000 (and growing) and the top 10 finishers also earning one of 10 seats to either the NHC, the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge or the Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship—and the field (with each contestant playing just one entry) numbering just 57—The BIG One probably represents your best mathematical chance to enter an important contest and leave with a nice prize.

In terms of last-race drama, we couldn’t have scripted the Exacta Extravaganza much better.

In as contentious a race as you’re ever going to see, Dylan Donnelly, 30, of Alta Loma, Calif., saw two of his three exacta box horses—Hallie’s Hero (9-1) and Abbaa (also 9-1)—prevail in a five-horse blanket finish in the final race of the two-day, $50,000 Guaranteed Exacta Extravaganza, the 11th at Woodbine. The dueling 9-1 shots combined on a $1 exacta payoff worth $152.20, and that propelled Donnelly from 3rd-place to first—a distinction that came with a prize of $20,250.

Saturday marks the inaugural “running” of our newest guaranteed, multi-day cash tourney—the Exacta Extravaganza. 

It begins on Saturday, ends on Sunday, and the format is simple. For an entry fee of $500, you get to make a three-horse exacta box selection on every race of the Kentucky Downs and Woodbine cards on both Saturday and Sunday. It’s a live-format game, so you can enter your picks right up until “off time” if you wish. Also, it happens to be an HT Tour event, so if you are participating in that, there are points to be won if you finish in the top 10.

Despite a potential “NHC hangover,” players came out in full force during Labor Day weekend (and week). Some big prices along the way enabled several aggressive—and sharp—multi-tablers to visit the winner’s circle more than once on a given day. Meanwhile, a couple of players managed to have a couple of highly successful days.

As usual, the week’s featured-tourney action began on Wednesday.

Parting is such sweet sorrow, especially where Saratoga and Del Mar are concerned. We’ll try to keep the accent on the sweet—and not so much on the sorrowful—during a Labor Day Weekend that offers a rare HT Tour event on a Monday plus daily qualifiers to The BIG One and the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge.