NHC, back in normal spot on calendar, begins Friday

The 2022 National Horseplayers Championship begins its three-day run Friday at Bally’s Las Vegas in Nevada, just five months after the 2021 tournament.

Disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years, this year’s tournament will return to its traditional place on the calendar after last year’s NHC had to be delayed for seven months. A total of $2.3 million in prizes will be awarded, with approximately $350,000 of that total transferred from last year’s prize pool due to a number of exemptions that were granted last year giving qualifying contestants the ability to compete in this year’s tournament instead of last year’s.

This weekend’s tournament will include 505 total players with 620 entries, according to officials of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, which administers the tournament. The first-place purse is being estimated at $725,000. The NTRA also provides approximately $770,000 in travel and hotel awards to the competitors.

Keith Chamblin, the NHC tournament director at the NTRA, said that 83 contestants transferred their berths from last year to this year. Separately, with COVID-19 surging again in many areas of the country, 62 berths have been transferred from this year to next year, Chamblin said.

“We are striving to be understanding and fair to all involved who have spent their time and money qualifying for a live event being held in Las Vegas,” Chamblin said.

The NHC is the richest handicapping tournament in the world. The competition requires players to place $2 win-place bets on a single horse in 18 races on each of the first two days, with each player required to place a bet on eight “mandatory races” and select another 10 races to bet from a pool of eligible tracks racing that day.

The top 10 percent of the points earners on the first two days of the tournament will qualify for the “semi-final” round on Sunday morning, and after the morning round, the field gets whittled to the top 10, known as the Final Table. All 10 players will be required to bet seven assigned races to determine the winner, with points rolling over from the previous rounds.

The tournament will take place just days after the NTRA announced that five veteran tournament players have been selected into its Horseplayers Championship’s Hall of Fame. The inductees are Stanley Bavlish, who won the 2007 NHC and made the final table in 2016; Michael Beychok, who won the 2012 NHC and is the tournament’s all-time leading money-earner; the late J. Randy Gallo, who helped organize the NHC and made the final table in 2019; David Gutfreund, who won the 2018 NHC and has qualified 15 times; and Paul Matties Jr., who won the 2016 NHC and has qualified 16 times.

The inductees will be honored at the conclusion of the NHC during a dinner ceremony on Sunday night.