I’m not sure when the last time was that we saw so many players reel off grand-prize heists on consecutive days. At the top of this list last weekend was David Nelson.
Nelson’s excellent adventure began on Friday when he had Peace Cloud ($37.40, $19.80) in the 7th at Tampa among his 3 firsts and 2 seconds.
Nelson defeated all but fellow Peace Cloud fan Terence Channon (4 wins, 1 place) in Friday’s Keeneland Grade One Gamble Pick & Pray, and both earned $3,500 seats to the popular competition on April 12.
Utilizing the same selections, Nelson took a backseat to no one in Friday’s Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge Low Ratio qualifier.
The victory gave Nelson $13,500 worth of seats on the afternoon. Not a bad day’s work. Hell, in this difficult terrain, it’s not a bad month’s work! He wasn’t finished, though.
Apparently needing some walking-around money to go with his seats, Nelson put up 4 wins and 3 places to bag the $8,549 top prize in Saturday’s $12,213 Big Bucks Pick & Pray. His beefiest return came from Braciole ($20.60, $8.10) in race 8 at Aqueduct.
Nelson clearly showed on Friday and Saturday that he is a good Pick & Pray player. Is he any good in Live-format games? Apparently so.
All of our Sunday features were hosted in the race-by-race format, including our qualifier to the May 31 Monmouth Pick Your Prize Tournament won by, you guessed it, David Nelson. He hit the final two races to finish with 5 firsts and 1 second on the day. His big hit came in that next-to-last race with Jassai ($49.60, $17.80) in race 10 at Tampa Bay Downs.
On April 5, Nelson will get out his biggest belt buckle and slip into a pair of cowboy boots.
That’s because Nelson also prevailed in our first qualifier to the Texas Two Step Championship, to be held on-track at Sam Houston Race Park.
We don’t know if Nelson can two-step, but he had to be doing a dance of some sort when this weekend was over. He won $17,000 in seats along with $17,729 in cash (after finishing second in two other featured cash games) to make it a $34,000+ weekend. And if he has any luck at Sam Houston…or Keeneland…or Monmouth…or at the BCBC, the weekend will have been worth a lot more to him.
The weekend was also plenty productive for Mike Lazarus.
Lazarus (4 wins, 3 places) had Peace Cloud en route to victory (over David Nelson) in Friday’s HT Tour battle, our $15,000 Gtd. Pick & Pray. He pocketed $10,548 in a game that was ultimately worth a total of $23,441.
Like David Nelson, Lazarus figured, “Why rest when I might be walking around lucky?”
Lazarus (2 wins, 4 places) came back 24 hours later to earn a $2,000 seat into the $350,000 Gtd. Players Championship here on April 5-6 by finishing second to Bruce Dagostini (3W, 0P). They both connected on Rouki ($42.20, $21.00) in race 10 at Tampa.
It was a bit of an ironic result in that Players Championship qualifier on Saturday—because Dagostini had also won a big prize the day before.
Dagostini (3 wins, 4 places) was one of three players to crack the century mark in Friday’s $75 NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers—and that got the job done since this one guaranteed three spots to next month’s big dance. Also advancing to Vegas here were first-place finisher Julie Kochensparger (4W, 3P) and runner up Mike Coutu (3W, 2P). All three had Peace Cloud on their scoresheets.
Before we go back to the start of the featured-tourney week, we want to highlight the Saturday that 2023 Flo-Cal Faceoff champion David Wolff had. Normally, it would have gotten him into the (highly prestigious) blog headline. This week, though, he got buried below the fold. We doubt he’s too upset, however, given how much he won.
Rouki was the heavy lifter for Wolff amid 2 wins and 4 places that brought him the winner’s share of $14,553 in our richest tourney of the week, our $25,000 Guaranteed game (an HT Tour event) that closed its doors with $32,340 in the kitty.
Wolff will also be on the active roster for the Monmouth Pick Your Prize contest.
He didn’t score quite as highly in this one, but he still held sway to earn the $2,000 scholarship in what was our first entrance exam for the May 31 test.
Okay, now we’ll rewind to Wednesday when all the featured-tourney fun began last week.
Joe Petrella hit Carcone ($17.00, $6.60) in the final contest heat—race 9 at Gulfstream—as his last (and best) of five Wednesday winners, and he earned the up-top money of $3,794 in the day’s $5,000 Guaranteed tourney, which closed with a pot of $8,433. David Wolff ($1,517) reported home in second place.
Kevin Willett also nailed Carcone at the end.
That was Willett’s fourth of four winners en route to the winner’s circle of Wednesday’s Keeneland Grade One Gamble qualifier.
For 2023 Spa & Surf Showdown champion Anthony Spinazzola, the Wednesday high-yielder was Sir Magistrate ($13.20, $3.00 in the 8th at Gulfstream.
Spinazzola finished with 4 wins, 2 places and a $2,000 Players Championship entry in his pocket.
Lets Declare Peace ($26.60, $9.40) in the 8th at Turf Paradise allowed Mike Yurczyk to declare victory in Thursday’s $6,000 Gtd. Pick & Pray.
Yurczyk swept the final 3 races to wind up with 6 winners in all. He collected $3,017 from what was a final purse of $6,705.
Michael Caposio (3 firsts, 2 seconds) also had Lets Declare Peace at the end.
Caposio’s peace dividend was a $2,000 entry in the April 5-6 Players Championship.
On Friday, Evan Trommer (2 wins, 1 place) and Nick “48 Hrs.” Noce (3W, 1P) added their names to the roster of participants for the $350,000 Gtd. Players Championship.
Trommer did all of his scoring in the first three contest races. One of his hits came with Tampa race 7 longshot Peace Cloud. Noce (3 wins, 1 place) got his best return from Ocean Mermaid ($14.20, $7.40) in race 9 at the Oldsmar, Fla., oval.
On Saturday, Thomas Michael Abinanti (3 wins, 1 place) and Tim Yohler (5W, 4P) recorded their biggest payoffs of the day in the same race—but with two different horses.
Abinanti cheered on the victory by Rouki ($42.20, $21.00) in race 10 at Tampa, the Turf Dash Stakes. Yohler, meanwhile, caught a max $22.00 place return on the 26-1 runner up, Horsepower. The productive Tampa race helped send both on to the Keeneland Grade One Gamble on April 12.
Rouki had an outsized effect on the outcomes of the three Saturday features at HorsePlayers.
Gerald “Like a good” Naber (3 wins, 3 places) used Rouki as his main springboard to success in Saturday’s $179 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge play-in.
Saturday’s high score (by a good margin) was Dan “Spoonful of” Shugar.
Shugar put up 6 wins and 2 places to best fellow Rouki backer Frank “Bedtime” Story (5W, 1P) in Saturday’s open, two-seat, NHC qualifier.
There was also a $210 NHC qualifier on Saturday that was restricted to those who had yet to secure a 2025 seat.
Siva Shankar Vellanki’s seat has now been secured. Vellanki booked 4 firsts (including Rouki) and 3 seconds along the way.
Sunday at HorsePlayers was notable in that it offered the final point-scoring race in the 2024 NHC Tour season.
Timothy Williams (3 wins, 3 places) and Dino Herrera (4W, 1P) each added to their point totals, but, more importantly, they both won NHC seats for coming in first and second. Williams had Jassai ($49.60, $17.80) in the 10th at Tampa. Herrera’s big horse Centavo ($42.60, $14.20) in race 8 at Aqueduct.
Christopher Maurer (4 wins, 2 places) had the final two contest-race winners, including Jassai.
Maurer was the victor in Sunday’s $165 NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers—an event strictly for non-winners of a 2025 spot.
It was a similar story in the other Sunday feature at HorsePlayers, a $500 Low Ratio Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge play-in.
Here it was Amy Brantley (5 firsts, 1 second) who correctly predicted the outcome of the final two heats in order to win.
Centavo was the highest common denominator in the Sunday scorecards of Andy Muhlada (3 wins, 2 places) and 2024 Pick & Pray Classic champ Mark Stillmock (2W, 2P).
Muhlada and Stillmock each grabbed $3,500 entries in Sunday’s qualifier to the April 12 Keeneland Grade One Gamble.
Stephan Gravina (3 wins, 2 places) and 2024 HT Tour champion (and 2025 Flo-Cal Faceoff winner) Eric “Skeet” Boyd (2W, 1P) got the $2,000 berths in Sunday’s Players Championship qualifier.
Jassai was the stable star for Gravina, while Boyd’s prospects were most boosted by the performance of Centavo.
Tim Gasaway managed to come up with both Centavo and Jassai, and—not surprisingly—he recorded the day’s highest score ($147.80).
The sparkling showing by Gasaway (3 wins, 1 place) came in a good spot. He won $12,403 for taking Sunday’s HT Tour event, our $20,000 Guaranteed game, which closed with a final purse of $27,562. David Nelson ($4,961) checked in second.
Barbara Small came up big in last week’s lone qualifier to the 1/ST Ultimate Betting Challenge.
Small’s best of four winners occurred in the final contest race (SA race 5) with Canyahearmeknockin ($17.00, $6.80). The victory moved her to the top of the leaderboard and brought her the $6,000 entry for the high-end skirmish on March 1.
At $500 per pop, the NHC Last Chance/First Chance Contest can’t rightly be deemed “high-end”. However, handicapping skirmishes don’t get much more crowded than that one. Last week, another 40 seats to the NHC Last Chance/First Chance Contest were won within these cyberwalls. Here are the latest to earn spots in the not-so-intimate NHC Eve gathering at Horseshoe Las Vegas:
Wednesday: David Wolff, Darryl Lacy, Geoffrey Schutt, John Farrar, Michael Marlaire and Matthew Ache.
Thursday: Jeff Joffrion, Gregg Kingma, Allan Weston, Ronald de la Gardelle, Russell Wilkes and Bob Montgomery
Friday: Terence Channon, Nicholas Battaglia, Wayne Eigelbach, Terrence Frank, Fabian Sultan, Joe Aurelio, Evan Trommer, Kris Andaur and Jim Colbert
Saturday: Siva Shankar Vellanki, Eddie Inman, John Hawkins, Jim Murphy, Jim Settle, Anthony DeCaspers, Mark Heider, Dennis Tiernan and Mark Richards
Sunday: Robert Masterton, Stephen Spinelli, Mark Stovall, Rick Vasquez, Mike Abernathy,. Matthew Ransdell, Kenneth Magner, Kris Andaur, Dennis Tiernan and Jack Schwartz.
Congratulation to all of last week’s winners. In the week ahead, we’ll close out February and ring in March—all in one fell swoop. We hope you can join us for part of it. Good luck!
