Earning an NHC seat is always heady stuff. Earning an NHC and making money while doing it is an even greater feeling. Curtis Brodzina and Eric “Skeet” Boyd both knew that feeling last week.

They don’t call Joe Scanio “Tex” for nothing. It’s time for the Brooklynite to once again dust off his 10-gallon hat, get out his cowboy boots and polish his big belt buckle…because he’s headed back to the Lone Star State.

For the first time in nearly two full days of contest play, Lawrence Kahlden was suddenly feeling a sense of dread.

When the 20 races on Day 1 of the $250,000 Pick & Classic were in the books, the leader was Lawrence Kahlden. He was ahead by the not-so-princely margin of 24 cents.

Featured tourneys on Saturday and Sunday were primarily Live-format games. Evan Trommer, however, played them as though they were Pick & Prays.

And that was bad news for his opponents.

Jerome Linderman had qualified for the last five editions of the NHC. This past March, he had even landed two entries to the big dance…but as far as the 2026 event was concerned, he was on the outside looking in. 

Not anymore.

Michael Caposio employed a very effective strategy last week: Pick up some spending money early in the week…and reinvest it thereafter.

When Evan Trommer has a good day, he tends to have a really good day. That was again the case on Sunday.

When Earl Pratt was 16, he was already six feet tall and, consequently, had no problem placing bets with the mutuel clerks at Sportsman’s Park outside Chicago. 

That was 69 years ago.

He didn’t enjoy any monster, $100+ days. He probably didn’t perform any better than almost all of you have at one time or another. What 85-year-old Earl Pratt did do, though, was put two really solid days of handicapping back-to-back, and for that he was rewarded with $155,203 in the first-ever BC Pick & Pray Tourney.