Breeders’ Cup Saturday was just another day at the office for professional gambler Sean Boarman … until White Abarrio and Elite Power stepped in and helped make that particular day Boarman's best day at the office ever. Thanks to their victories, Boarman became another of the day's top winners at the 2023 Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita. He left the track over $642,000 richer.

Sean Boarman is a 43-year-old professional gambler from Lexington, Ky. who has been making a living solely by betting horse races for 20 years. He scored the biggest payday of his life by topping a field of 571 entries to win the 2023 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge (BCBC) tournament on Nov. 4. (The results are unofficial until BCBC officials audit the scores and certify the standings next week.)

Boarman rarely plays tournaments but was able to beat a field of seasoned handicapping tournament high rollers to earn the top prize in the BCBC that carried a $1,427,500 purse – a purse higher than some of the Breeders’ Cup races. Boarman turned an initial $20,000 investment (two entries at $10,000 each) into a final take-home payday of $642,363, of which $231,238 was his final tournament real-money bankroll and $411,125 was prize money.

Some handicappers might already be familiar with Boarman, who has been a guest on the Pro Player Diary on Pete Fornatale’s In the Money Podcast. Boarman had just appeared on Fornatale’s show the week of the BCBC to discuss his Breeders’ Cup opinions.

“I was highly confident going into the weekend,” Boarman told Fornatale in his post-tournament interview. “I thought I had a good strategy, a good game plan, and I was able to stick to it and it just worked perfectly.”

The BCBC offers deep-pocketed entrants a chance to win big money by betting big money into the big Breeders’ Cup pari-mutuel pools. It annually draws of field of big bettors and handicapping tournament aces from around the country who target these types of handicapping contests throughout the year.

The Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge is a real-money handicapping challenge. Players are required to deposit $10,000, of which $7,500 is a players’ bankroll while the other $2,500 goes to the prize fund that gets returned to the top 20 finishers in the form of prize money. Entrants bet a minimum of $600 per race (no maximum) on at least three Breeders’ Cup races Friday and seven Breeders’ Cup races on Saturday. Permitted wager types are Win, Place, Show, Exacta, Trifecta, and Daily Doubles excluding special doubles.

Horseplayers might be surprised to find out how Boarman turned a starting $7,500 tournament bankroll into pari-mutuel earnings of more than $230,000 over the course of two days. It wasn’t longshots. It turns out that Boarman had four strong opinions on the Saturday Breeders’ Cup races and all four were favorites. All four of them won. He bet the four winners – Inspiral, Goodnight Olive, White Abarrio, and Elite Power – strong enough and with enough precision to get the job done.

Boarman’s BCBC strategy actually began months ago when he watched White Abarrio’s victory in the Whitney Stakes at Saratoga. “It dawned on me that (White Abarrio) was going to win the Classic. I started thinking about how I can get to a position where I can make a bet on him that would win (the BCBC).”

Flash forward three months, Boarman had to get started on growing his original $7,500 BCBC bankroll before he could think about White Abarrio.

“My game plan was to get to around $30-35,000 and bet it all on White Abarrio,” Boarman said. “The target was to get to $150,000.”

Goodnight Olive (Eclipse Sportswire)

After betting the minimums on Friday, Boarman's first move of the tournament didn't come until early on Saturday when he bet Inspiral in the Maker’s Mark Filly and Mare Turf and combined her in a daily double with Goodnight Olive in the subsequent PNC Bank Filly and Mare Sprint. The resulting winning payoffs got his total up around $36,000, and he then added a little more with $600 in bets on Idiomatic in the Longines Distaff to get to a bankroll around $39,000.

Boarman was in the exact position he wanted to be in with the Longines Classic coming up next. His all-or-nothing $39,000 in bets on White Abarrio won, and the payoffs were enough to rocket his bankroll up to $126,000, which at that point was third place on the BCBC leaderboard.

The 2022 BCBC winner Drew Coatney had employed a similar strategy to win last year’s event: build a big bankroll and bet it all on his pick in the Classic, which last year happened to be Flightline. The problem for Boarman, however, was that the Classic was no longer the final Breeders’ Cup race in 2023. There were still two races to go. This turned out in the end to help Boarman instead of hurting him, because after the Classic he still needed to leapfrog two more players on the leaderboard in order to win the BCBC.

Boarman says much of his handicapping is based on pace, and in particular late pace figures to be able to judge which horses will finish fastest. Boarman judged the pace of the final race of the contest, the Qatar Racing Sprint, to be fast, and liked Elite Power in the race based on pace. He also judged Gunite to be the best of the speed horses.

“I think I’m able to suss out the pace of these big races better than most,” Boarman said. “I think that’s the biggest thing.”

Boarman locked away over $100,000 of his bankroll at that point and opted against an “all-in” type of bet, with the rationale that those earnings plus the prize money was already enough to make this the “weekend of a lifetime.”

The $20,000 he did bet on the Sprint, however, turned out to be enough to make the difference because his key horses, Elite Power and Gunite, finished 1-2 in the race. He used $4,000 on saver trifectas in case Elite Power and Gunite got split and made his main $16,000 bet on a straight exacta Elite Power over Gunite. The exacta paid $16.00 for a $2 bet, and Boarman’s $16,000 exacta returned $128,000 to vault him into first for the BCBC championship.

“A lot of people probably didn’t want to bet (Elite Power) at 8-5 as a closing sprinter on a California speed track,” Boarman said. “He was a good finisher and horses like that are extremely deadly.”

Elite Power (Eclipse Sportswire)

Boarman’s final total mutuel bankroll of $231,238 gave him a comfortable margin of victory over runner up Kevin Strom, who himself bankrolled an impressive $215,452 and added to that second-place prize money of $274,075. Mike Mulvihill, who had led the tournament late, settled for third with a bankroll of $173,160, which was good for $148,450 in prize money. The top five was rounded out by Christy Moore in fourth with $93,990 ($102,775 in prize money), and Tyler Sprague who finished fifth with a $90,350 bankroll plus $79,950 in prize money. The tournament paid down to the top 20 finishers.

The BCBC also served as a qualifier for the next National Horseplayers Championship to be held in Las Vegas on March 15-17, 2024. The top 15 BCBC finishers all qualified. The NHC is the only existing tournament with a richer purse than the BCBC, annually in excess of $2 million.

The 2023 BCBC attracted a field of 571, which was 22 more than played in 2022. The majority of players participated from the Breeders’ Cup host site at Santa Anita or played online at Xpressbet. Some others played at official satellite locations at Gulfstream Park or Monmouth Park. Boarman was on-track at Santa Anita for the Breeders’ Cup but opted to make his contest wagers through the Xpressbet platform.

Scores this year were much higher than in years past, indicating that players might need to start readjusting their target winning bankrolls in the future. Last year’s BCBC winner, Drew Coatney, totaled a $139,000 winning bankroll which this year would have netted him fourth place. Boarman remarked he might raise his target score upwards to $180-200,000 next year.

Boarman said he was overcome with emotion after learning he’d won. “I sat down on the dirty stairs at Santa Anita and just cried for five minutes,” he said. “I got it together long enough to call my wife and tell her I had won. I immediately booked the red-eye home.”

As for what’s next, Boarman says he doesn’t expect much of a lifestyle change due to his BCBC victory, and he’ll still remain a professional pari-mutuel player and not a tournament player. His main focus currently is betting Hong Kong racing because there he can take advantage of massive pools on an almost daily basis.

“I don’t anticipate much of a change. I feel like I’ve fallen into a pretty good rhythm, and I was having the best year I was ever going to have before this huge score,” Boarman said. “I’ll play the BCBC next year obviously. I might play one or two others. This has always been a career to me. It’s my job.”