TOURNEY TALK

Had you told me four days ago that I would finish my first National Horseplayers Championship in 47th place out of 668 entries and take home $6,000, there is a very strong chance I would have cried tears of joy.  As I sit here in my Treasure Island hotel room on Monday morning, waiting to…

Am I worried that Rich Nilsen is going to read this, adjust his Friday NHC selections based on my opinion, and then beat me at the final table?  No.  I am not.  And you know who isn’t worried about my NHC plays?  Rich.  Plus, my commitment to the loyal readers of LoneSpeed, irrespective of my…

The NHC Tour ends today.  The last event where points can be earned takes place in less than an hour from now on Horseplayers.com, and by 7:00pm EST tonight, anyone who is more skillful than I am when it comes to using the scoring calculator on the NHC Tour page will know who the champion…

As I type this, I am supposed to be landing at Midway Airport in Chicago to compete in the Friday and Saturday NHC qualifiers at Hawthorne while seated at a table with adequate electrical outlets alongside July Hawthorne contest winner Steve Decaspers.  But as you may have noticed from recent social media posts of mine,…

Baseball fans know the Mendoza Line as this, per Wikipedia: The Mendoza Line is an expression in baseball in the United States, deriving from the name of shortstop Mario Mendoza, whose poor batting average is taken to define the threshold of incompetent hitting. The cutoff point is most often said to be .200[1] (although Mendoza’s…

Maybe I can salvage the day with a good showing in a contest with an entry fee of $0.  

Based on his social media posts, I can only assume that the Scott C. atop the BetPTC leaderboard after Day 1 of the Cash Is King contest is none other than Scott Carson, known on Twitter as @CarsoniPH.  Carson tweeted on Saturday that he rode Risky Proposition and his 22.5-1 off odds to wins in…

The reason I can sleep at night in spite of a couple of hugely moronic decisions I made in the BCBC is that I was never making money with the final three races being won by Monomoy Girl, Enable, and Accelerate.  It’s not that I didn’t respect those horses.  In fact, I was preparing to…

When the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge first came to be a thing, I never dreamed I’d take part.  The $10,000 entry fee just seemed too steep for me.  So I watched from afar and wallowed in my jealousy as elite bettors and tournament players had all the fun.  But then in 2016 I decided to…

A man has an affair, gets caught, and tells his wife “I made a mistake.”  She doesn’t buy it.  Why?  Because that’s not a mistake.  A bad decision?  Yes.  But not a mistake.  A mistake is forgetting to grab the milk while grocery shopping.  Or failing to carry the 1 when balancing your checkbook.  But…