Road to $1M contest begins

On Tuesday, Daily Racing Form announced its new contest: the $1 million, zerotakeout World Championship of Handicapping. The contest takes place Jan. 27-28 exclusively online at DRF Tournaments. Players can buy in now for $5,000 or choose to participate in feeders and qualifiers to win their way in.

On Wednesday, DRF unveiled the first contests designed to send people to the new championship level event – including three completely free contests this weekend. Start your journey for free, and end up with a chance to win your share of $1 million. What’s not to like about that?

Playing in DRF Tournaments is easy. All the tournaments have a predetermined amount of races where entrants must make $2 win-place bets on a single horse.

The early tournament schedule centers around a Grade 1 qualifier to be held on Derby Day that will utilize the “live” format, where picks can be changed until the off time of each race.

Most players will win into the Grade 1 Derby Day contest through a multi-stage process. There are feeders and roundone contests, both of which advance players to the Grade 1 Derby Day contest, where they can win into the championship directly.

Round-one contests cost $95 with one in seven entries advancing to the Derby Day contest, where one in 10 will win their $5,000 entries to the $1 million big dance. There will be round-one qualifiers each day this weekend. As an alternative, players can buy in to the Derby Day contest for $580.

All of Friday’s contests will use the “all-in” format, where all picks for the contest must be in before the scheduled post time of the first contest race. The first one is a free game where the top 20 finishers will get an entry into Saturday’s feeder, where the top 10 percent will advance to Sunday’s round-one contest. There will also be an $11 feeder to the Sunday round one, as well as the $95 round-one contest, where one in seven will advance to Derby Day’s Grade 1 qualifier.

Saturday’s featured event is a live-format round one where one in seven will win into the Derby Day qualifier.

There’s also another freebie using the all-in format. This time the top 10 finishers will advance to the Sunday round one. Lastly, there’s an all-in $11 feeder to Sunday’s round one.

Sunday’s free game offers the biggest prize in any of the free contests. The top two finishers to advance directly to the Derby Day Grade 1 (a $580 value).

There will also be a $95 all-in round one contest as well as an all-in $11 feeder where the top 10 percent win into the Oaks Day round one.

The tournaments and prizes listed above are unofficial. For a full schedule of tournaments scheduled for this weekend – and every day from Wednesday through Sunday – check out tournaments.drf.com.