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| Sports Haven |
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Arthur Peters of Lowell, Mass. became the first qualifier for NHC V thanks to his victory in the Sports Haven Handicapping Challenge on Feb. 1-2.
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Just weeks after Steve Wolfson, Jr. of Holly Hill, Fla. walked away with the $100,000 grand prize at National Handicapping Championship IV in Las Vegas, handicappers wasted no time taking their first steps on the road to next year's National Championship. The first qualifying tournament for NHC V was held on Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 1-2, 2003 at Autotote's Sports Haven facility in New Haven, Conn.
The seventh annual $102,000 Sports Haven Handicapping Challenge was won by Arthur Peters, 66, of Lowell, Mass., who earned first-prize of $40,000 for his victory over a sell-out field of 340 players, which included 220 out-of-state players hailing from 14 different states.
Peters was in 53rd-place after the first day of competition, but then cashed four of his 10 mythical $200 bets on Sunday to move into the lead on the second day of the two-day event. Peters finished with a contest-winning bankroll of $11,685 thanks, in part, to longshot picks including Red Opal ($25.20) in Sunday's race 1 at Santa Anita, and Crystal Sea ($74.20 but odds-capped at $44) in Sunday's race 9 at Gulfstream.
The top two finishers in the Sports Haven Handicapping Challenge qualified for NHC V a slight decrease from the top four who had traditionally qualified out of prior Sports Haven tournaments. The second Autotote qualifier was runner-up Robert Englander of Rocky Hill, Conn. ($10,780). Englander, who is the brother of Eclipse Award-winning Thoroughbred owner Richard Englander, earned second-prize of $15,000.
The Sports Haven Handicapping Challenge, like all Autotote contests, pays back 100 percent of all entry fees in the form of prize money. The top 25 Sports Haven finishers all earned prize money. Completing the order of finish in the top 5 were Antonio D'Angelo (earned $9,000 with a bankroll of $10,330), and Jim Cramer and Peter Previti who tied for fourth and each earned $5,838 for matching $9,920 bankrolls. Robert Weidlich, the winner of the 1998 Sports Haven Handicapping Challenge, led after day one and ended up finishing sixth with a total of $9,660. Weidlich earned $3,500 for sixth-place, plus an additional $1,000 in prize money for day one's highest total.
Autotote's next contest will be the sixth annual Bradley Teletheater Handicapping Challenge, to be held in the Hartford, Conn. area on July 12-13. The slightly smaller event will offer $68,000 in prize money and two more qualifying slots in next year's NHC V.
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