National Horseplayers Championship tries March in Vegas

Las Vegas

Four conference championships in college basketball are going on around town before the NCAA Tournament lures one of the biggest throngs of sports bettors next week. Organizers of this week’s National Horseplayers Championship are not only happy to be along for the ride, they are generating some steam of their own.

“There’s plenty of action,” said chief operating officer Keith Chamblin of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, which is putting on the 24th annual NHC from Friday morning through Sunday evening. “This is probably the best weekend of the year. Everybody’s team is playing.”

For the more than 600 competitors using more than 700 entries in the NHC, basketball is their sideshow. So are concerts starring Usher and Keith Urban and Chicago and Jimmy Buffett. Those distractions might as well be out of sight, out of mind. Accomplished horseplayers have converged on Horseshoe Las Vegas, formerly Bally’s, to compete through this weekend for more than $3 million in cash and prizes.

It is happening a little later than usual this year. The NHC was moved from its usual February date because it would have been the same weekend as the Super Bowl, which will be played 2 1/2 miles away next year at Allegiant Stadium.

“We’ve locked in these March dates for the next three years,” Chamblin said. “Certainly one of our goals was to be able to lock in dates for multiple years, put a stake in the ground and say this is the weekend of the NHC.”

It was not simply a matter of avoiding the Super Bowl. Chamblin said it also was important to avoid other events that already had the attention of horseplayers.

“It doesn’t interfere with the Pegasus handicapping championship,” Chamblin said, referring to the late-January event in Florida. “We think having some certainty as to when it’s going to be held is advantageous for everyone, including our partners that host tournaments throughout the year.”

It is a return to solid ground for an event that not only had to react to the National Football League expanding its season but also to the pandemic. After the 2020 NHC beat the COVID lockdown by about a month, the 2021 tournament was postponed until August, and last year’s event was a patchwork of current qualifiers and entries that had been deferred because of travel restrictions.

“This year’s field will have 77 deferrals,” said Chamblin, who added there still were a scant few that might carry over to next year. “I think, thankfully, it’s coming to an end.”

The contest’s popularity was reflected in the number of entries for Thursday’s preliminary event known as “last chance, first chance.” With a $500 entry fee, it has been an annual path for contestants to try to get into this week’s tournament at the 11th hour as well as a first chance to qualify for next year’s NHC.

“We have a record 750 entries,” Chamblin said Thursday morning. “There are 591 playing for the last 28 seats this year, and 159 for the first six seats next year. First prize just for (Thursday) is $56,250.”

At least 11 former champions, including 2022 winner David Harrison, 64, of Webster, N.Y., have qualified for this year’s NHC with at least two others trying to play their way in Thursday. So, too, have 10 winners of the NHC Tour, a year-long competition that was won in 2022 by Jay Johns, 62, of Meridian, Idaho.

Dennis Decauwer and Bill Shurman, two newly named members of the NHC Hall of Fame, also are in the tournament. They are being inducted Sunday along with José Arias and Jim Goodman.

Sally Goodall and Paul Shurman, two former NHC Tour winners, and Trey Stiles are making their record 21st appearances in the championship. No fewer than 141 entrants are in for the first time. The participants’ ages range from 23 to 83.

Players cannot buy their way into the NHC. They earned their spots by playing in tournaments during the last year at racetracks or online.

The competition format remains the same for the 10th year in a row. Players make mythical $2 win-place bets Friday and Saturday using a combination of 16 mandatory races declared by a competition committee and 20 optional choices made individually. The top 64 finishers are guaranteed $10,000 each and advance to Sunday morning’s semifinals, which are made up of 10 optional races chosen by each surviving player. From there the top 10 are assured of at least $50,000 each, and they play the same seven races Sunday afternoon at the final table to determine cash payouts. They range from $50,000 for 10th place to the estimated $750,000 first prize that will be nailed down by the final number of tournament entries.

Chamblin said the NTRA is considering a change to what has been the NHC’s traditional, final-table format.

“We’ve been talking about how we might add a little more drama to the final table in the future,” Chamblin said. “But we really haven’t made any decisions one way or another. There is talk about the possibility of eliminating players from the final table so that you could potentially get down to two or three players at the end playing the last race. We’re modeling all that and seeing how it would have potentially impacted past NHCs if we had an elimination process like that.”

The NHC runs from noon to 9 p.m. EST both Friday and Saturday. In addition to the 64-player semifinals, there is a consolation tournament that will run concurrently Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. EDT. The championship finals are scheduled to start Sunday at 5 p.m. and run until a winner is declared around 9 p.m. EDT.

Coverage of the National Horseplayers Championship is made possible in part by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, which is providing hotel accommodations to Horse Racing Nation.