The oldest handicapping contest on the internet begins its 20th year Friday. The Public Handicapper Challenge, which offers a chance to qualify for the Horse Player World Series for free, starts with the Kentucky Oaks. The PH Challenge is a six-month contest that runs through the Breeders’ Cup. The top finisher will win a trip to the Horse Player World Series in March 2019, including four nights hotel are the Orleans in Las Vegas, plus $500 for airfare and a one-year subscription for Daily Racing Form past performances. The PH Challenge is a contest unlike any other. Every week until the Breeders’ Cup, four contest races are selected (contestants play all nine races on BC Saturday). You can play from 0 to 4 races each week - $2 win bets only. When your pick does not win you lose $2. As you pick winners, your bankroll accumulates and the highest scores at the end of the contest win. For contest purposes, there is a 30-1 cap on the odds, meaning no horse can pay more than $62. The contest has been run every year since 1999, with similar rules since the beginning. Typically a profit of about $200 (on 100+ races) is required to win. The best score ever was posted by Ron Reisner in 2008, when he went a little crazy and finished up with $265.90. “Public Handicapper keeps people in the game with four quality races every week," said Scott Carson, co-founder of Public Handicapper. "I can’t tell you how many emails I get from people saying their weekend starts Thursday night with the announcement of the PH races."  Public Handicapper is also an excellent learning tool for new players for a couple of reasons. All picks are public so you can see exactly who is betting what. There are some very sharp players on the site – season and lifetime ROIs are posted right there in black and white so there is no sugarcoating the numbers. Also, players have the option to do little write-ups about their picks, describing the handicapping fundamentals and other angles they use to make their selections. You can’t help but learn something reading what others have to say, whether you agree or disagree. And doing these write-ups can be an education in itself, forcing a level of detail-oriented work that can translate directly to your ROI. The odds screen is a really interesting tool as well, as it gives you a chance to look inside the Public Handicapper hive mind. It translates the collective picks into an odds line and it can be very predictive. Based on how things look early Friday morning, Audible may be a shorter price than many horseplayers think. If you miss the first couple of days of the PH Challenge, don’t worry. For one thing, the PH Challenge is a marathon, not a sprint. Besides, there are weekly and monthly prizes as well. A final great feature of the Public Handicapper contest is that players who sign up get a 25 percent discount on Daily Racing Form past performance packages.