McGoey joins the WCH fray

Two-time Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge champion Patrick McGoey will be among the horseplayers competing at the World Championship of Handicapping, a $1 million online tournament taking place Feb. 3-4 exclusively at DRF Tournaments.

“It wasn’t great handicapping,” said McGoey, “but I got lucky when it counted.”

McGoey was referring to the fact that several tricky-to-have price horses came in during the 12-race sequence in Saturday’s Grade 1 qualifier, but none of his opponents in the 27-entry field used them. Of course, this wasn’t just luck, it was skillful game selection. Most DRF Tournaments events have favorable prize-to-entry ratios that encourage participants to play horses they like rather than just reaching for horses because of the price they are on the board.

The overall winner, who also won a WCH seat, was Gary Wissig. He got things going with a play on Frosted’s sister, Indulgent ($38), who scored in the Go for Wand at Aqueduct in the contest’s second leg. From there, he added four more collections, the longest of which was Cautious Giant ($17.40) at Gulfstream. He finished with $85.10.

McGoey started slowly – he was on zero after the first quarter of the contest – but he got things going in a big way in Aqueduct’s seventh thanks to the Mary and Chester Broman homebred Rachel’s Blue Moon, who went out for Jimmy Jerkens. She crossed the wire first under Martin Garcia and returned $48.20 win-place combined.

“I thought the race was wide open, and it turns out she can run a bit,” said McGoey, a Louisiana-based.

He, too, added Cautious Giant, and then his third and final hit came in the Remsen with Catholic Boy ($15.20), a horse he’d backed in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. McGoey’s final score of $80.80 was just more than $8 clear of third. Finishers three through five in the contest – Paul McClelland, Mark Livingstone, and Brent Sumja – all received DRF Tournaments site credit.

World Series qualifiers

Tournament play returns to DRFT on Wednesday. DRF also has announced that it will be running qualifiers for the upcoming Horse Player World Series, which will take place March 8-10 at the Orleans in Las Vegas. The first qualifier for the HPWS will take place this Sunday, and players can feed into Sunday’s qualifier starting Wednesday.

On Wednesday, players also will have a free chance to start their journeys to the $1 million, no-takeout WCH. There also will be regular feeders for the WCH, which start at just $11. Every operating day, players can participate in Round 1 events where 1 in 7 entries advance to Saturday’s Grade 1. The Round 1’s cost $95, and players can buy in directly to the Grade 1 for $580. In the Grade 1, one in 10 players will win their $5,000 buy-ins to the WCH finals.

For a full list of all the games happening on DRFT, go to tournaments.drf.com.