Pettit notches another big contest victory

Joe Pettit, the Handicapping Haberdasher, won his second important contest in the last two months this weekend, adding a victory at “The BIG One” at Laurel to go along with his Saratoga Betting Challenge win.

For his exploits at Laurel, Pettit took home his $2,343.80 bankroll, $6,500 in cash, and seats to both the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge and National Horseplayers Championship.

The contest utilized a new format in which players were limited to wagering no more than $250 on a given race. This definitely made for a more compressed leaderboard, even if it limited the amount of money players could churn throughout the event.

“It was pretty thrilling,” Pettit told Eric Wing of the HorseTourneys blog about his win in the two-day event. “It was the opposite of my Saratoga win.”

At Saratoga, he clocked a $1,300 straight exacta and a $300 win bet. Here, as a result of the maximum wagering rule, he sat on his bankroll most of the second day.

Second-place finisher Karl Barth came away with one of the better contest bad beat stories of the year. He was shut out in the last race trying to bet more on the eventual winner. He finished with $2,253 on his bankroll plus an NHC seat. Here is the rest of the top 10: Mike McIntyre ($1,779.10), Brett Wiener ($1,616.50), Dan Flanigan ($1,503.60), Francis Drew ($1447.40), Sammy Richman ($1,421.80), Tony Zhou ($1,369.15), Sean Nolan ($1,368.25), Blake Courtney ($1,356.65).

◗ Also this weekend, three players won their way to the NHC in a qualifier held at Los Alamitos: Craig Kaufman, Linda Rodriguez, and Leo Vukmanovich.

DRF Tournaments

There was also a full weekend of qualifying action on DRF Tournaments. On Saturday, Alex Calzi won a seat to the Keeneland Challenge and Samuel Poggi won his $5,000 buy-in to the World Championship of Handicapping.

Calzi ($61.40) did his damage at Laurel, connecting with Fire Key ($34.40 win-place combined) in Laurel’s Turf Dash and Monkeys Uncle ($27) in the listed Selma Stakes. Poggi ($75.80) was best in a field of 17, finishing with $75.80. His two big winners were Fire Key and Questeq ($25) in Belmont’s ninth.

Also on Saturday, three players won into next weekend’s direct qualifier for the Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship: Carl Grether, David Mullin, and John Nichols.

Sunday’s biggest winner on DRF Tournaments was Donald Kloehn ($45.10), who eked out a win in a 14-entry field to capture a seat to the Fall Classic at Orleans as well as $500 in travel money. Two players finished within $5 of his total, which he built through an amazing eight collections in the 10-race sequence. His longest price of those eight was $8.80 from Enthrall in Laurel’s 10th. But his chip-chip-chip away was good enough to get the job done on this day.

Other Sunday winners include Gregg Kingma and Jon Hurd, each of whom advanced to the $960 Pegasus World Cup Betting Championship qualifier on Saturday. For more information about that game, and all the games happening at DRF Tournaments, go to tournaments.drf.com.