The most thorough & timely contest dope, results & other info, is at:http://www.horseplayerdaily.com/cat/Players+Lounge+Home+Page.html The links are obvious with the exception of Your Blogs, which includes some pretty interesting pieces on contest strategy, including one written by someone who pilfered your cybername.

Another which is consistently good is the Tournaments & Qualifiers section of the Discussion Group at: http://www.homebased2.com/km/msiez9987.htm

I'm not 100% sure, but assume the reference to Miss Patti, who along with her Director of Racing are light yrs ahead of the Beulah twins in the looks dept, is a positive one, so perhaps you'll indulge me a brief "war" story. Midway through the 1st day of their two day contest last yr, the entire tote system in Canada went down. Although it had never happened before, Patti & her sidekick had a backup plan in place to keep track of everything by hand, which ended up working very well. She later told me that she also had a second backup plan in case the people she was counting on to help her implement backup plan number one didn't show up for work.

In contrast, at the one day "last chance" contest at Bally's earlier this year, which had a lower turnout, they had a problem with the feed from one of the two tracks which were supposed to be part of the contest. As far as I could tell, they had no idea what to do next, & proceeded to change the format 3 or 4 times, the end result being, if I remember correctly, that they ended up using an entirely different track & format, even though a number of the entrants, including one irate trainer I talked to, had flown considerable distances and spent considerable time preparing. As these things go in contests, it did work out for the winner, who was upstairs playing blackjack when his cohorts called, explained what happened, & convinced him that since everyone was now starting from scratch,his chances were as good as anyone's.