Pick & Pray weekends often result in someone having “a really good day” (as Richard Dreyfus said in “Let it Ride”) and rolling to multiple victories. We certainly had a classic example of that this weekend—but we also had players who turned in very strong efforts on consecutive days, which is also highly impressive. Craig Hom was one such player on Friday.
If you’re looking to finally gain an entry to next Thursday’s Horse Player World Series—or to add an additional entry to your portfolio—this weekend is your last chance or else you’ll have to pony up $1,500 at The Orleans. The same applies to the $700 in entry fees for the Hawthorne March contests taking place next Friday and Saturday. On the other hand, you have plenty of time to qualify for Saratoga, with your first chance being this Sunday. It’s also your first chance on Saturday to qualify for the Wood Memorial Challenge at Aqueduct, but there’s definitely not plenty of time for that since the event takes place on April 6. It all makes for a frenzied weekend of featured-tourney action, which gets started on Friday.
Here are the contest tracks for each day of the upcoming Horse Player World Series (HPWS) to be held March 28-30 at The Orleans in Las Vegas:
For the second straight week, we lead with Gary Blair. With the exception of those who cashed big at the NHC, it seems fair to say that no one has had a better 2019. Certainly no one has been as consistent.
There’s a lot going on this weekend. For me, it’s usually all about the “featured tourneys” offering the biggest prizes—and there are certainly plenty of those this weekend (20 to be exact). We’ll cover all of those…but there are two interesting side attractions of note as well.
Emily Kyrillou turned her starting live bankroll of $250 into a final total of $10,327.50 to finish best of 230 entries and win the Aqueduct Gotham Challenge on March 9.
Gary Blair is a five-pin bowling center manager from Toronto. Similar to many people who work in a leisure-based industry, the 60-year-old has a busy work schedule filled with a lot of nights and weekends. Horse racing is his number one pastime, however, and he devotes much of his free time to carefully mapping out the plays that will be the foundation of his near-daily contest entries.
We alternate every weekend between putting the accent on either live-format or Pick & Pray tourneys. This week, it’s Pick & Pray’s turn to rule the roost. Sixteen of our 18 featured events will be run in “set-it-and-forget-it” style. Prayer services begin on Friday.
It has been three days since “Fourgate” (full credit to Justin Dew, who I believe was the first to coin that term), but people are still buzzing about it. As we await word on how the NTRA will settle the issue, it is somewhat interesting to take a step back and gauge people’s reaction to last Saturday’s free NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers. Or…if nothing else…it’s a way to pass the time.
They say March comes in like a lion. Well it sure did here. The star of the weekend, thanks to his Friday performances, was Eric Kurzhal who scored a hat trick from a total of just four featured tournaments. Kurzhal’s exploits will havt to wait slightly, however, because the lead story was Saturday’s free NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers.
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