Last weekend, Tyler Hoffman proved that you can win on DRF Tournaments on a budget. He turned an $11 Wednesday DRFT investment into a $1,500 Horse Player World Series seat.“I’m proud that I was able to win the seat,” he said. “I feel that people sometimes think that tournaments are meant for gamblers with big bankrolls, but there are opportunities for those with smaller bankrolls, too. It’s one of the many reasons why I love playing the DRF qualifying tournaments.”In Saturday’s qualifier, for the first nine races, David Snyder had Hoffman’s number. They shared one winner, in another race his 8-1 beat Hoffman’s 6-1 right on the wire. In the seventh, Snyder’s horse got a great trip and won going away while Hoffman’s was buried on the rail. When the last tourney race came up, he was trailing by $30, and it didn’t look like it was going to be his day. “For whatever reason, the racing gods decided to give me one,” he said.His pick, Elsa, won at 11-1 with Snyder’s horse flying late but losing the photo for second. “I only beat David by $6.20,” Hoffman said. “Had his horse won the photo, he would have collected place money. I’m not exactly sure how his horse running second as the 2-1 favorite would have changed what I got back on the place end for my horse, but my guess is it that the margin in the final result would have been dimes either way.”Hoffman’s run on Saturday proves that in horse racing luck does even out in the end – sometimes.Hawthorne seats 8 for NHCHawthorne’s series of contests have proved popular with players over the past several years, and that was the case once again last weekend with eight players earning seats to the National Horseplayers’ Championship over Friday and Saturday.One of the stories to follow coming out of the event belongs to Bill Downs. Downs, the track announcer at Indiana Grand, has been an avid contest player for many years and has made several trips to the NHC.“The Hawthorne contest was too good of a deal to pass up, so I decided to take a chance,” said the 47-year-old, who lives in Indianapolis. “I’m very happy to be going back to the NHC.”“It’s always great to do well in real money because even if you don’t make the prize pool you can still go home with a decent amount,” he explained.As a race caller, he is allowed to wager while he’s working but he rarely does. “Early on in my career I had a situation where I was alive to a lot of money and I thought it affected my call,” he admitted. “Since then, if it’s going to cause me to lose focus I don’t get involved.”One of the reasons he’s been a Hawthorne regular over the years is because the events are timed well with his work schedule.“I watch Indiana Grand as much as anybody in the world, so [being a track announcer] does help me with betting after the meet,” he said. “With Churchill Downs going, there were a lot of Indiana Grand horses.”His big score came at Churchill with a $5 pick three in races 3 through 5 that returned more than $3,000. The final leg of the wager kicked the payoff into overdrive. “Of the three races in the sequence, that’s the one I liked best even though I used three horses,” he said. “I just didn’t like the favorite.”One of his three selections, Needs Supervision, got to the line first at 37-1. “She was coming out of a race at Laurel and shouldn’t have been near 30-1 in that spot,” he said. She drew away to win by five with the 3-5 chalk a well-beaten second.From there, he was in a great spot strategically. The top six all got the same prize with the top two also becoming $1 million bonus eligible. He knew that two players near the top of the leaderboard, Dave Gutfreund and Mike Mulvihill, were already double-qualified and just chasing the bonus. That meant the top eight finishers were likely to get seats.“I had a good idea of what I’d need and at that point I could just hang out and play whatever I had to,” he said. “I played conservatively and felt confident throughout the rest of the afternoon.”Gutfreund and Mulvihill ended up running one-two and will head to Vegas with a chance to walk away with a seven-figure score should they secure victory. The other qualifiers from Hawthorne on Saturday were Gary McMaster, Alexa Zepp, Matthew Ordzowialy, Dan Mustari Jr., and Erick Counts. On Friday, Gary Lyons and John Thomas won in to the NHC.◗ There’s another chance to qualify for the Horse Player World Series this weekend on DRFT. Entries cost $94 and 1 in 19 entries will win their $1,500 seats. The HPWS is a three-day, mythical-money contest taking place at Orleans Las Vegas from March 28-30. Saturday’s qualifier utilizes the all-in format meaning that all picks must be in before the scheduled post time for the contest’s first race.On Sunday, there is another Round 1 qualifier for the Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship. Entries cost $220 and 1 in 5 will move on to compete in the $960 buy-in online Pegasus qualifier on Dec. 15. The Pegasus contest itself takes place Jan. 25-26 and is a tremendous opportunity for horseplayers. All the prize money is added by Gulfstream, meaning players get to wager their entire $12,000 bankrolls – there’s no entry free and you walk away with whatever is left on your bankroll at the end.For more information about everything happening this weekend, go to tournaments.drf.com.