Explaining Hawthorne success in national handicapping contest

Las Vegas

In his quarter-century running the National Horseplayers Championship since it began in 2000, Keith Chamblin can explain a lot.

In his role as the chief operating officer of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, Chamblin is at ease rattling off the particulars and history of the three-day, $4.5 million contest scheduled to begin Friday morning at Horseshoe Las Vegas.

Chamblin even had a reason for something more mysterious and confounding. Why has the NHC had a recent run of success for competitors coming out of handicapping contests at Hawthorne Race Course?

“I think there’s just a lot of good horseplayers in the Chicagoland area going all the way back to Al Capone,” he said. “Maybe before that. There’s just a hell of a lot of good horseplayers up there.”

But still, in a fiercely competitive event that has about 650 players using 765 entries to make mythical win-place bets on 53 races, it is a remarkable trend. Jim Benes in 2013, Scott Coles in 2019 and Justin Mustari in 2022 are Hawthorne graduates who won the NHC finals. Then there is Kevin Costello, who just completed an unprecedented second NHC Tour championship covering the entire year. He, too, came out of Hawthorne.

“I’m not sure that I have a (theory),” said Costello, 55, whose 2023 NHC Tour title came only two years after his first. “I guess Hawthorne lends itself to good handicappers.”

All this as Chicago horseplayers have seen an erosion of the live version of their game. It was only months before the very first NHC when Sportsman’s Park racetrack, right across the street from Hawthorne, was torn down. Arlington Park was lost to the wrecking crew last year after Churchill Downs Inc. sold it to the Chicago Bears, who leveled it and reportedly are about to flip it rather than build a stadium on it.

Now in Northern Illinois, Hawthorne is left by itself, still finding its feet in the downsized era of Illinois Thoroughbred racing as it has an unbuilt racetrack casino on its to-do list for 2025.

Yet it has its hub. Ad its 12 off-track-betting outlets. And its contests. Its free contests. There may be the simple answer to the question about the wave of Hawthorne success in the world’s biggest handicapping championship.

Other than a bankroll, it costs nothing extra to play in any of the track’s main events. Four of them this year will qualify top competitors to get a winter weekend in Las Vegas for the 2025 NHC finals. Established live-money events will come April 21 in conjunction with the Illinois Derby, June 29 and 30 at the track and at Hawthorne’s OTBs and during Thanksgiving weekend Nov. 29-Dec. 1, when the OTBs will host a competition that has 10 NHC seats among the rewards.

A two-month, online competition was added starting next Sunday. One 2025 NHC berth will be given to the winner of that contest built on mythical place bets.

“There’s never a fee,” Hawthorne general manager John Walsh said Thursday at the pop-up studio his team built inside the Horseshoe events center to stream its own coverage of the NHC. “You just get a card with $300 on it and go bet the tracks. At the end of the day, if you have the most money, you keep the money, and you win the prize.”

Building on the success its players have enjoyed nationally, the track six years ago added the Hawthorne Invitational to its June calendar. The object was to showcase high-profile players like former National Hockey League player and current NBC Sports racing analyst Eddie Olczyk. The 2018 Pegasus World Cup Betting Challenge winner used an 80-1 long shot in his final play to win last year’s invitational and earn an NHC seat this weekend.

“The idea was let’s invite really good players, and then we’ll film them and interview them while they’re playing, and we’ll turn it into a little reality TV show,” Walsh said. “We did that, and it aired on NBC Chicago locally. We recorded it all, and it aired later. It’s still something the people can kind of watch and see the drama of it. The idea was reorient the focus so it’s not ‘here’s what’s happening on the track. It’s ‘here’s what’s happening in the room.’ It plays off of the World Series of Poker.”

All these incentives to lure players and promote the contests has paid off in a swell of entries. Costello thinks the more people who play at Hawthorne, the deeper the talent pool. Oh, yes. The free entry does not hurt, either.

“I definitely think that has a lot to do with why the field size of the Hawthorne tournaments is pretty darn good for the live events,” he said. “They attract a good field, because it doesn’t really cost anybody anything to give it a try.”

The alternative is to pay a fee that goes into a prize pool that might lead to a nice pot of money for the top finishers. Costello said it also can lead to some counterproductive nerves.

“I think that can definitely be intimidating for people who haven’t played in these tournaments before,” said Costello, a former aerospace engineer. “If you think you’re going to go to Keeneland and play against some really good, sharp players, and you’re going to forfeit $1,000 right up front, that can be intimidating.”

Chamblin offered the idea that Hawthorne still has racing tradition in its bones if not in its contest blood. Even if there are not year-round Thoroughbred cards in Chicagoland anymore, there are parents and grandparents have passed along their knowledge.

“While we’ve lost one of the marquee tracks in the world with Arlington’s closing, we still have those horseplayers that live in that area or that region and perform very well in these contests,” said Chamblin, whose first trip to a racetrack came when spent summers in Southern Illinois and went with his grandfather on a drive to Ellis Park in Kentucky. “There’s generations of horseplayers. There’s a lot of good horseplayers in the Midwest. No question.”

Mustari, who plays at the same table as his father and uncle, is a perfect example.

“My dad has been the reason that I play this game,” Mustari said in 2022 when, at 26, he became the youngest-ever NHC champion. “He’s taught me everything I know. I have to give a lot of credit to him.”

Whether it is the free entry back home or horseplaying pedigree or just pure coincidence, the 19 Hawthorne players who are in the NHC this week command respect. Track executives are not shy about promoting them. The Hawthorne alumni certainly will get mentioned and even interviewed on the NHC livestream Friday, Saturday and Sunday starting at 1 p.m., 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. EDT on the Club Hawthorne social-media platforms.

“We’re certainly not taking any credit for how good of players those guys are,” said Dakota Schulz, Hawthorne’s head of marketing. “But in terms of the allure of what we do, I think it’s designing contests that maximize the strengths of handicappers, celebrate the skill that they have and inviting them to come and make sure they have a great experience. It’s really that simple. What would horseplayers want, and then build it.”

Accommodations for Horse Racing Nation coverage of the National Horseplayers Championship were provided and paid for by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.