You’ll see that there’s a comma between the two numbers in the title of this posting rather than a dash. That’s because Saturday, January 6 didn’t go as planned, to put it mildly.
Sixth NHC Berth Added, 2017 Tour Points to be Awarded, $50 Credit Toward Future NHC Play Added to Impacted HorsePlayers.com Accounts
The NHC Tour “Final Five” Contest has been re-scheduled forSaturday, January 13. A sixth berth in the NHC has been added to the contest prize structure and 2017 NHC Tour points will be awarded.
Participation in the January 13 contest will be limited to only those individuals who entered the January 6 contest, which was postponed after the first race due to technical issues.
Your entry(s) have been automatically entered in this Saturday’s contest. There is nothing players will need to do in order to register for the event. Selections may be made in the View/Make picks section once selections are available on Friday afternoon, January 12.
Full refunds are available to any individual who cannot participate in Saturday’s re-scheduled contest. If you wish to cancel and receive a refund of your entry(s), please email support@horseplayers.com and your request will be accommodated promptly.
All participants in Saturday’s canceled contest will receive a $50 credit for future NHC contest play on HorsePlayers.com. This credit will appear in your account by Monday morning, January 8.
We sincerely apologize for the events that forced us to postpone Saturday’s NHC contest and hope that you can join us for this Saturday’s Final Six Contest.
-NTRA
-HorsePlayers.com
LATEST NEWS (3:45pm, January 7): The NHC Final Five contest has been officially rescheduled for Saturday, January 13. An additional NHC seat has been added (six will now be awarded), and all players impacted by the postponement will receive $50 in HorsePlayers.com credit. Full details are available here.
Beginning at around 3:30pm ET on January 6, our website began experiencing issues with our hosting solution, which impacted site accessibility for over an hour. We’ve now determined this to be primarily related to a minor flaw in our code that had the potential to impact LIVE format events in particular at high entry levels. In other words – the fault lies with us.
All of today’s LIVE events (minus the SURVIVOR games that had already been decided before issues arose), and all tourneys in the SANTA ANITA schedule, have been refunded.
Today’s PICK & PRAY events that were unaffected (those that began before the Santa Anita schedule) will be scored per usual.
The NHC Qualifier on HorsePlayers will be rescheduled for a later date. Details will be posted on HorsePlayers.com and sent via e-mail once this is determined. While entries to the re-scheduled event will be automatically carried over from today’s event to the new date, players may certainly cancel those entries for a full refund. Please be patient as we work on rescheduling the date and populating the new event with today’s entries. We will let you know when you have the option to cancel for a refund.
We pride ourselves on this stuff not happening here (this is our second major disruption in nearly eight years), so we’re as angry and disappointed as you are. We have identified the problem, and will ensure that this does not create an issue again.
Again, we sincerely apologize for your trouble at our website today.
McKay Smith
President
HorseTourneys.com
We’re in a weird stretch of the calendar when a normal Friday-Saturday-Sunday weekend is the exception rather than the rule. Two weeks ago was Christmas. Last week was New Year’s. Next week is Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. This weekend, though, we’ll all have to make due with just three days of featured tournaments. But we feel we are up to the task.
It’s hard to say for sure who a “Contest Player of the Year” award for 2017 might go to. A sensible choice would be Ray Arsenault for having won the NHC in the early part of the year. Christopher Dewey is the current leader, as of this writing, in the NHC Tour standings, so he could be worthy. As could Ed Peters who won The BIG One and finished second in the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge.
But if we were to present a Contest Player of the Year award for 2018, there would only be one choice.
Congratulations to Alan Bourke, Brian Knowles and (HorseTourneys qualifier) Mark McGuire. They were the winners last weekend on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, respectively at Surfside.
Congratulations to Friday, December 29 winner (and HorseTourneys qualifier) John Ukleja and Saturday, December 30 victor Paul Langley. In addition to winning an NHC seat by virtue of their respective triumphs, each is now eligible for a $1 million bonus should he go on to win the NHC in February at Treasure Island.
New Year’s Day is not known as a particularly religious holiday (even if January 1 actually is a “holy day of obligation” in the Catholic Church). Be that as it may, you can be assured that there will be a whole lot of praying going on this weekend—a lot of picking and praying, to be more precise. That’s because HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers will host a combined 18 featured tourneys during the Friday-Monday, four-day New Year’s holiday weekend, and 15 of those will be of the Pick & Pray variety.
It was a curtailed weekend of contest action by the calendar. But not really in terms of the number of featured tourneys. Heck, even our single-track Gulfstream Pool-style tourney on Sunday wound up paying out more than $10,000. So despite the Christmas holiday, there’s still a lot to catch up on.
With Christmas Eve falling on Sunday and Christmas Day on Monday, that means a compressed racing schedule. But not a subpar featured schedule at HorseTourneys and HorsePlayers. Essentially, what we might have lost on Sunday, we are plowing into Friday and Saturday. The net result: 13 featured tourneys…and—in case your holiday shopping is complete—a nice assortment of Gulfstream-only tourneys on Sunday since Gulfstream is open for business that day.
