Fornatale: Courtney captures two seats for WCH finals

Blake Courtney had a very merry Christmas thanks to DRF Tournaments. On Saturday, Courtney demonstrated the power of playing multiple entries by securing not one, but two seats to the $1 million, no-takeout finals of the World Championship of Handicapping, an online contest taking place Feb. 3-4.

There are many different theories of how to play multiple tickets in the same contest. Typically, when you see a player hit his or her own personal exacta in a contest it’s because they used many of the same horses on both tickets, hit with those, and then diversified in a few spots. Not so with Courtney, who with 24 picks across 12 races, used the same horse on both only once. Not surprisingly, that horse was a winner: Bamboo Stick ($22.70 win-place combined) in Aqueduct’s ninth.

Courtney’s first entry ended up winning with $94.70. That one started off with short-priced winner Flash Drive ($9.60) in Aqueduct’s sixth and started to look really good after connecting in the next contest event with Strike Power ($35.20) in Gulfstream’s seventh. Two races later at GP, Powerline ($27.20) provided a boost, with Bamboo Stick providing the rest of his points.

Courtney’s second entry started slow, accruing just $4.20 through the first six races. El Grande Rojo ($18.80) signaled a change in fortunes, followed by Bamboo Stick. But it was Trismen ($38.40) in Tampa’s ninth that put Courtney in position to win two $5,000 seats. There were a couple of long prices to come in during the sequence, but Courtney was fortunate that no one was able to combine them with other points in a big enough way to threaten his dominance.

Courtney also played in a Horse Player World Series qualifier on Saturday, and he nearly won that event, too. In the end, Ron Tackett won the HPWS seat by besting a field of 33 with a total of $112.80. Courtney was second playing the same ticket that won the WCH qualifier. He and third-place finisher Theresa Balck each received a $500 site credit.

Tackett built his winning total through four cashes, including the cap horse Zanotti in Aqueduct’s eighth, the Queens County. Zanotti, a Ten Strike Racing gelding, paid $78.50 to win and $25.20 to place, but those totals were limited to $42 and $22 for contest purposes, for a total score of $64.

Contest action returns to DRF Tournaments on Thursday, December 28. Next weekend there will be another Grade 1 qualifier for the World Championship of Handicapping, as well as qualifiers for both the Horse Player World Series and the Pegasus World Cup Betting Challenge. There will be feeders for all three of those events taking place every operating day.

Go to tournaments.drf.com for more information, including a full list of all upcoming games.