I’m not sure we’ve ever had so many top prizes so evenly distributed. Across 21 featured tourneys on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, there were 38 first prizes, and no one won more than one. Typically, when prizes are so spread out, it’s a “live-format weekend”, but this was mainly a Pick & Pray weekend. So what gave?
I forgot to mention one anecdote in my “Thoughts from The BIG One” blog. Late on Sunday, Saratoga Colonel took the final race from Belmont at odds of 29-1. David Wolff excitedly raised his arms and said, “I’ve got it!” Except that he didn’t.
Another The BIG One is in the books, and this year’s was as fun as any I’ve attended. The credit for that has to be split between the staff at Laurel Park (terrific as per usual), the staff at The Hotel at Arundel Reserve (great facility and location) and the players, themselves, who made everything as easy as possible for all of the above and for us as well.
Tony Martin connected on a 64-1 longshot in Belmont’s final race on Saturday, and hit a 29-1 winner in the Sunday Belmont finale to power past his 54 opponents and win the 2019 renewal of The BIG One, held at Laurel Park on Saturday and Sunday. For the victory, the 51-year-old retired groundskeeper from Lexington, Ky., earned $27,000, a seat to the 2020 National Horseplayers Championship and a $10,000 entry to November’s Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge.
Bolstered mightily by Cirque’s 64-1 victory in the day’s final mandatory race, Bruce Pratt of Las Vegas and Tony Martin of Lexington, Ky., are the leaders in a field of 54 after the first day of competition at The BIG One, hosted by Laurel Park.
There was no shortage of winning long shots on Saturday and Sunday, which meant many paths to victory and a pretty even distribution of grand prizes even though it was a predominantly Pick & Pray weekend. Prices were harder to come by on Friday, however, which depressed scoring but did not depress the spirits of those who came upon the right horses.
There’ll be a lot of picking and a lot of praying going on this weekend at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers. All but four of our featured events are Pick & Prays, and the cash and prizes available are worth saying some prayers for as well.
Introducing the Flo-Cal Faceoff.
The newest big-money, online cash game at HorseTourneys will take place on Saturday and Sunday, February 29 and March 1, 2020. The Flo-Cal Faceoff is a two-day, all-mandatory tourney with a guaranteed purse of $100,000 and no limit as to how high the purse can grow beyond that guaranteed minimum. The buy-in is $1,500, and low-cost feeders will be hosted at HorseTourneys regularly between now and next February.
Once again, the top prizes were well distributed during the featured-tourney weekend—which might have been a bit less surprising this time around since most of the games utilized the live format. Only Frank Fosbre rang the bell twice. Though Jon Madden and Steve Arrison rang their lone bells loudly on Friday.
Back in June, we sent our players some survey questions to get their opinions on various aspects of play on our site. One of them asked at what level payoff caps should be set. It had been approximately three and a half years since we’d queried players on this topic, so we felt it was time to see if sentiment might have changed.
HorseTourneys.com Blog 