It’s Super Saturday weekend with all kinds of Breeders’ Cup preps (and quite historic races in their own right, including the Jockey Club Gold Cup) at Belmont and Santa Anita. To mark the special nature of Saturday, we’re stepping up the day’s big cash tourney and also putting forward another special qualifier. But first things first, and where this weekend is concerned, that means Friday.
There are some things about The BIG One that, each year, I find myself appreciating (or chucking over) only after a couple of days have passed. Here, in no particular order, are a few:
Joe Pettit, second after Day 1, took the lead early on Day 2 and did not relinquish it from there to win the $325,000 The BIG One at Laurel Park.
It was a tale of two tournaments for Karl Barth and his high-school classmate Brent Johnson.
The HorseTourneys team, including this reporter, is already ensconced at Laurel Park in preparation for this Saturday and Sunday’s The BIG One, where we will be joined by 56 (at latest count) of the nation’s best tournament players. You can get updates and progress reports on the competition throughout each day via Twitter at @horsetourneys . For those of you who won’t be at The BIG One—and even those of you who will—we have put together a nice assortment of weekend tourneys that will award at least $34,500 in cash, four NHC seats and three BCBC entries.
The field of 52 is now set for this Saturday and Sunday’s The BIG One at Laurel Park. And as one tournament observer commented, late yesterday, “The field may have just gotten a whole lot tougher.”
If you’ve never been to The BIG One, it’s like those commercials for the old Claridge Casino in Atlantic City—“Smaller is Friendlier.” Sunday is your last chance to grab online seats for the Sept. 22-23 event at Laurel where 10 NHC seats, 10 BCBC entries, 10 Horse Player World Series entries and roughly $10,000-$15,000 in bonus cash will await a field of no more than 57. If you don’t qualify in Sunday’s two-all-inclusive-packages-guaranteed tourney, you can still purchase one of five available buy-in entries for $5,750. But qualifying for a tenth of that amount is way more fun. That “Last Chance” qualifier for The BIG One is just one of 15 featured tourneys on tap for this weekend.
Last weekend was a dicey one for which to pick contest races—particularly on Sunday. We strive to post our races at least 48 hours in advance in order to not just give players ample time to handicap, but to allow them to review the race offerings and decide if they even want to play at all.
Triple-digit scores were hard to come by this weekend—a function of formful racing and, especially on Sunday, weather. But impressive tourney winners were in their usual strong supply at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers this past weekend. One of the most notable of the weekend came right off the bat on Friday.
It’s always a little disappointing once Saratoga and Del Mar finish their meets though, for some, the disappointment is more about the passing of summer than an impending downturn in their wagering fortunes. Indeed, if you are among the many horseplayers who found Saratoga and Del Mar really hard—even extra hard—this year, perhaps you can take solace in the fact that Belmont is now back, Kentucky Downs is still with us, and Laurel is about to embark on what many consider the best part of its racing schedule. So there’s that to look forward to, as well as a full slate of featured tourneys this weekend—17 to be precise—that will keep you engaged, entertained and, if you’re skillful, nicely rewarded.
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