How do you handle double entry in horseplayers championship?
Las Vegas
The goal is the National Horseplayers Championship. Qualifying for one of the more than 600 available entries is a dream-come-true for tournament rookies who try to measure up to some of the best handicappers in the world.
But what happens if the dream pays off at 2-1? There are 134 players in this year’s NHC who have the coveted double entry. Tournament rules written by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association allow a maximum of two entries to anyone skilled enough – and/or lucky enough – to have earned them.
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Careful what you wish for. Tough as is to concoct a strategy for one entry in this tournament, there appears to be no perfect way to attack having two seats at the table. Overthinking the situation could turn the dream into a proverbial nightmare.
Four NHC participants, including two former tournament champions, talked about it during a roundtable discussion for Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. As pictured above, they included (from left) Jonathon Kinchen, the 2015 NHC Tour champion who is an analyst for Fox Sports and a podcast host for In the Money Media; Justin Mustari, the defending NHC champion; his father Frank Mustari, a 10-time NHC player; and Steve Wolfson Jr., the 2003 NHC champion.
Justin Mustari (133rd place after day 1): “I don’t have two entries this year. I just have one, so that’s going to narrow down my (focus). I had two last year. I’m probably not going to look through all six tracks or eight tracks. I’m probably going to stick to about two or three solid tracks. Optional (races) last year were the reason that I won the tournament, So I’ve got to stick to that again. Ideally, you’d like to split up (picks) a little bit. I couldn’t really get myself to do that. In a lot of situations, if I like a 10-1 or 15-1 shot, I’m going with that on both entries. If that horse hits, I need to have that on both entries. I have a strong opinion on that type of horse at those odds, and that value I’m playing I have on both entries. So I did spread a little in some optionals here and there, but a lot of the plays that I had strong opinions on, I played on both entries.”
Frank Mustari (61st and 266th): “I’m double qualified this year again, and in my opinion it’s a huge edge. The way that I do it, like Justin said, if I have three or four strong plays on the day, I will put them on both entries to try to get both entries moving up that leaderboard. Then I spread from there. It really helps if you can get off to that good start and get both of your tickets moving in the right direction early. Now you’re spreading, and that’s where spreading comes into place. When you start spreading early, all of a sudden you had a 10-1 shot on your ‘A’ ticket. Then you put a 10-1 on your ‘B’ ticket. Now you get flustered. You’ve really made it tougher on you, because mentally it’s hard to come back from putting it on the wrong ticket.”
Steve Wolfson Jr. (195th and 202nd) “I do have two entries this year. In 2017 I only had a single entry, and I felt I was very focused. Maybe in a previous year I had two, and it didn’t necessarily help me. I think the price structure does promote keeping them together some, because at the cut line of (the top) 10 percent, you can play well and not great and have two chances, and that’s a really good thing.”
Jonathon Kinchen (212th and 336th). “I think I play two entries different than most people do. I play the same thing on both entries, basically, throughout both days, because my idea is that if I have a day, I want to be in great position to win at all. I don’t want to cash out. I’m not here to just cash. I’m here to win the whole thing. I think what happens when people have two entries, they just want to make the cut, so they’ll play a 20-1 here and play a 20-1 there. Then this one (entry) becomes a good one, and that one’s the bad one, and then it switches like four or seven times. ‘This is the good one. Oh, that’s the bad one. Now it’s the good one.’ I’m just going to play the whole thing the whole way through, and then I’ll split on Sunday (after the cut to the final 64 entries). I didn’t do that the first year that I had two entries in the final table (in 2015). I happened to hit a 20-1 optional on both. That was just because I had two Coronas, and I was tired of losing. My advice to people with two entries is play with You like and stop trying to catch. Play what you think is going to happen, and if it doesn’t work out, you play craps.”