Check out the latest on this breaking news from today – CLICK HERE

Sunday’s last game at Magic City had a Trifecta pool of $2,687.  That may not seem like a large number, however, it was the largest Trifecta pool for Magic City Fronton since 8/14/2022.  The Average Trifecta pool for the 8-games at Sunday’s matches was $2,052.

Not only are the Trifecta pools showing promise, but the Average $1.00 Trifecta payoff for the first 6-performances, 48-games, at the Magic City Fronton is a whopping $272.  Now the casual observer might say “so what” but let’s put these figures into modern day “Jai-Alai perspective.”  Let’s compare the first 48-games (6-performances) of the Magic City Fronton, now in their 6^th year of pari-mutuel Jai-Alai wagering games, with the long-standing Dania Jai-Alai which opened 70-years ago.  Dania Jai-Alai recently operated a short meet from December 2022 through January 2023.

First 48-games Average Trifecta Handle:

• Dania Average Trifecta Handle = $2,708 per game
• Magic City Average Trifecta Handle = $1,831 per game

Dania Average Trifecta Handle (full meet Dec-Jan) = $3,405 per game

Magic City’s Sunday Trifecta handle of $2,687 in game 8 is less than a cheap steak dinner away from Dania’s Average Trifecta handle of $2,708 for their first 48-games.  Now I find that impressive!

First 48-games Average $1.00 Trifecta Payoffs:

• Dania Average = $221 per game
• Magic City Average = $272 per game

Magic City payoffs are trending 23% higher than Dania payoffs for the start of the meets.

Most Recent Full Meet Comparison on $1.00 Trifecta Payoffs:

• Dania (full meet Dec ’22 thru Jan ’23, 450-games) = $229 per game
• Magic City Fronton (2022, 904-games) = $229 per game

.  Note:  Both Magic City and Dania have the same 25% takeout rate for Trifecta pools.

Steve M (aka straymar)

This marks the first week of the 10-week contest period for the FREE SayHili Contests for Battle Court. The contest weeks run from Friday through Tuesday and are easy to enter.

Contest Prizes have been increased to a minimum of (5) pieces of Jai-Alai memorabilia.

Submit your entry NOW through Friday at 6:50-pm for the first week contest

Check out Contest Page for more info.

Be sure to check out the new article on Jeff ‘Laca” Conway’s PelotaPress site about Stu Neiman. The article was written by Juan Ignazio Zulaika. Here is the link to article.

Check out our new Contest Page under the “Battle Court and Sports Wagers” drop-down menu for more details on the easy steps to submit your weekly entries for neat contest prizes of Jai-Alai memorabilia! Deadline for entry submission each week is 6:50-pm EST on Friday evening. Submit your entry early if possible. Entries can be submitted as early as Wednesday each week for the FREE weekly contests which run from Friday through Tuesday.

Note 2/21 Contest Prize update: Winners will now receive at least (5) pieces of Jai-Alai memorabilia (instead of 3). Steve M took inventory for contest prizes and has increased the weekly prizes! There are a lot of nice items! Be sure to enter!

Check out our new Contest Page under the Battle Court drop-down menu for more details on this.

Magic City Fronton in Miami debuts its 6th Season of pari-mutuel games (called pelota games) on Monday, February 13^th at 1:30-pm.  According to Stu Neiman, there will be no changes to the Pelota format for 2023.  Thus, there will continue to be 8-games with the Spec 7 format (games to 7-points) and no changes to wagers being offered.

The 2023 pari-mutuel season does come with roster changes; (2) players have left the roster and there are (3) roster additions.  Players Diaz and RonRon have left the roster.  Diaz, who had a late-year injury in 2022, moved with his long-time girlfriend to Colorado while RonRon and his family moved back to California.  Note that Diaz has since recovered from his back injury.  Diaz exited Magic City in winning-style when he won his last game played at the Magic City Fronton on September 19^th where he and partner Douglas won a hotly-contested match against the favored Flores-Manu team in 3-sets with scores of 6-5, 1-6, 6-5. RonRon leaves a legacy of having the 3rd best Win % for Pelota singles games in 2023.  RonRon was also a member of the Rebote Renegades who won the Battle Court II Championship finals in November of 2022.  Adios Diaz & RonRon and we wish you the best in your future endeavors!

The three new Pelota roster additions are Jairo, Manny and Iriondo.  Jairo and cesta-maker, Manny, are not new to the Magic City Fronton as they have previously competed in Battle Court matches and will continue to compete in Battle Court.  Iriondo on the other hand is new to Jai-Alai and made his pro career debut just last week as a Charger at the first night of 2023 Battle Court matches.  Iriondo made US Jai-Alai history by being the first Jai-Alai player ever to make their professional debut in front of a national TV audience on ESPN3.  Iriondo is a US citizen born in New Haven, CT who had been living in Spain.  His father played professional Jai-Alai as a back-court player at both Milford and Miami under the name Retrolaza.

Robin who was injured last season will be out through May of this year (last played on 10/4/2022).  Robin has been undergoing some intensive rehab on his left knee in place of surgery.  Bradley who had been out due to injury last year restarted Battle Court matches in late 2022 and will be competing only in Battle Court matches for the first part of 2023.  Also, late breaking news is Inaki’s wrist fracture, side-lining him while he recovers.

Don’t miss out on the hot Pelota and Battle Court action in 2023. Be sure to open and/or fund that BetRivers sports betting account for Battle Court and explore the pari-mutuel wagering account options offered by watchandwager.com and mywinners.com.  If your state doesn’t allow Jai-Alai pari-mutuel wagers at this time, it’s NOT game-over.  Be sure to partner with a good friend or family member who resides in a state where Jai-Alai wagers are allowed.  Check with customer service to see if they allow wagers from your state as the lists change periodically.  Here are the contact numbers:

Watch & Wager:  (888) 204-9150, on-line wagers only

MyWinners:  (800) 468-2260, on-line and/or phone wager options, Note:  Connecticut residents’ only option is MyWinners.

Contests:  No more weekly fantasy Jai-Alai contests for Battle Court sponsored by Magic City, however,  all is not lost.  SayHiLi is working out details for a FREE Battle Court contest to start in early March (details TBD).  Prizes will be non-monetary but will include some really nice Jai-Alai memorabilia items.  Stay tuned for more on this and be sure to support ALL versions of Jai-Alai to help with “Keepin’ the Jai-Alive!”

Steve M

Here is a link to the recent press release with lots of info on the new Battle Court Spring 2023 Season:

PRESS RELEASE

Retolaza was born in 1964 and debuted professionally in 1984 at Durango Spain. He was Rookie of the Year at Miami Jai Alai (1986) and played there until the players’ strike in 1988, when he returned to Spain for the next 8 years, competing in tournaments partnering with the likes of Bolivar, Alberdi, Cachin, Remen and other top talent.  He returned to the US in 1995 where he was a top backcourter at Milford until his retirement in 2000.  Info provided by Mark Kaminsky, historian of the National Jai-Alai Association.

Here is some season record history for Retrolaza (#54) from Milford programs.  The info is mostly mid-season stats.  Milford had year-round games from 1996 to 2001 since Bridgeport closed in 1995.

———-

Note that 1997 GP for other players ranged from 127-260 so this program info was early in the meet.  The 1998 stats provided show GP of 105 for Retrolaza while other players had GP ranging from 382-829 at the time, so assuming he started later in the meet or was dealing with an injury.  The 2000 stats show 455 GP while some players had up to 830 GP at that point; this was Retrolaza’s retirement year.

The Milford season record history for Retrolaza was provided from programs owned by Alecs Smith, another well-known Jai-Alai historian and Jai-Alai artist.  Alecs designed an Orlando Jai-Alai program cover for their Citrus Tournament one year and also created the logo for the SayHiLi site.  He is also a pretty darn good amateur player according to several reliable sources.

Retrolaza’s son, Iriondo (#45), takes to the short-court for his Magic City professional career debut representing the newly branded Miami Lifestyle Chargers against the Rebote Renegades on Friday night Battle Court this week at 7-pm.  Iriondo is partnered with Zulaika in the 2^nd match of the night versus the Renegade’s team of Goixerri-Ben.  The 4^th match of the night features Iriondo vs Ben in a singles match. 

SayHiLi wishes Iriondo the best in his professional debut.  Iriondo will also be playing in the Magic City Pelota games which start on Monday, February 13^th at 1:30-pm EST.

Magic City Fronton in Miami debuts its 6^th Season of professional Jai-Alai in 10-days starting with Battle Court matches on Friday, February 3^rd at 7-pm followed by the traditional Pelota games (aka pari-mutuel games) which begin on Monday, February 13^th at 1:30-pm.  Battle Court matches are the relatively new sports-betting style of head-to-head matches formatted like a tennis match where there are 3-sets to a match and the first team/player to win 2-sets wins the match.  There are only two players or doubles team in a match and sets are single points to 6-points, so they are essentially a series of (3) mini-partidos to 6-points.  Friday night Battle Court matches will again allow Live attendance with doors opening at 6:30-pm.  Friday night the Chula Chargers take on the Rebote Renegades!  Don’t miss out!  If you can’t see it in person, CLICK HERE for the ways to watch.

The 2023 season comes with roster changes; two players have left the roster and there are six new additions, five from Dania plus a new player.  Players Diaz and RonRon have left the roster.  Diaz, who had suffered a back injury, has moved with his long-time girlfriend to Colorado and RonRon has moved with his family back to California.  Note that Diaz has since recovered from his back injury.  Diaz exited Magic City in winning-style when he won his last game played at Magic City on the 9/19/2022 H2H match 6 where he and partner Douglas won a hotly-contested match against the favored Flores-Manu team in 3-sets with scores of 6-5, 1-6, 6-5. RonRon leaves a legacy of having the 3^rd best Win % for Pelota singles games in 2023.  RonRon was also a member of the Rebote Renegades who won the Battle Court II Championship finals in November of 2022.  Adios Diaz & RonRon and we wish you the best in your future endeavors!

Five new players to the Magic City Fronton are from Dania Jai-Alai.  They are all currently playing at the 2-month Dania Beach Invitational Tournament which concludes on Sunday, January 29^th.  The new players from Dania are front-court players Goenaga, Iturbide and Zulaika and back-court players Arta and Urbieta.  All of the players transitioning from Dania will be playing only in the Battle Court matches, however Arta and Urbieta will also be judging for the Pelota games.  Note that Iturbide is in the final Championship partido match at Dania this Friday night after game 9.  Iturbide-Oyhenard (4^th seed) take on Urrutia-Mandiola (7^th seed) in a 21-point partido where the winners each take home $2,500 and second place is $1,500 each.  Zulaika is competing in a 15-point partido match for 3^rd place on Thursday night where the winning doubles team members each take home $1,000.   See the complete brackets for this tourney on the SayHiLi home page.  Good luck to both Iturbide and Zulaika!  Don’t forget there is WIN betting on these partido matches.

The remaining new addition to the roster is Iriondo from Spain, who is a US citizen born in New Haven, CT.  Iriondo has never played professional Jai-Alai, but his father played pro-Jai-Alai in Connecticut and at the Miami fronton until 1988 under the name Retrolaza (note – see end of article for some Retrolaza history).  Magic City had been contacted by Iriondo who had expressed interest in playing at the Magic City Fronton.  He had enjoyed watching the short-court Magic City Jai-Alai games on the YouTube channel.  Magic City Fronton player’s manager, Juan Arrasate (known as JR), scouted him out on his recent trip to Spain where Iriondo impressed him when they took to the court.  Iriondo trained on a big court and he also studied engineering at a university in Spain. Stu Neiman said “he is a really really nice young man and has nice form on both sides.” SayHiLi’s Steve M and stat chart-man Joel A (Mo Crank in the chat rooms) welcome all of the new additions to the Magic City 2023 roster and wish them the best!

Previous Battle Court player and cesta-maker Manny along with Jairo will be competing in both Pelota and Battle Court matches this year. Jairo, another former Dania professional, joined the Magic City Battle Court roster in 2022.  This should make for even more challenging late singles games 6 & 8 for Magic City Pelota matches, the likes of which haven’t been seen in this century at any US Jai-Alai fronton.

The 2022 Magic City Singles Championship was won by Goixerri with 58 wins (26%) and Douglas was second with 44-wins (19.6%).  RonRon had the 3^rd best percentage wins with 18.5 followed by Carballo with 17.6.  Both Goixerri and Douglas played exclusively in the late singles games 6 & 8, featuring the top singles players.  The roster additions of Manny and Jairo to these games should make for some added spectacular action in the Spec-7 format.  Stu Neiman is pushing for the addition of a separate Early Games Singles Championship for the 2023 Pelota season.  Sounds like a great idea Stu!

Robin who was injured last season will still be out through May of this year.  Robin has been undergoing some intensive rehab on his left knee in place of surgery.  Robin last played on 10/4/2022.  Bradley who had been out due to injury last year restarted Battle Court matches on 10/25/2022.  He will be competing only in Battle Court matches for the first part of this year.

Stu Neiman said there will be no changes to the Pelota format for 2023.  Practice sessions have been on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, however since this is the 6^th year for Magic City, practice sessions have been reduced however some Battle Court squads have taken to the short-court to practice for the upcoming Battle Court matches.  Battle Court has expanded from (4) squads to (5) for 2023.  The new squad is named the Dejada Devils.  Be sure to check out the SayHiLi home page for the Battle Court squad team members and the doubles teams for each squad for Spring Battle Court in 2023.  Squad members were finalized at the recent January 9 Battle Court Draft at the Magic City Fronton.

SayHiLi’s Steve M did some research on Iriondo’s father with his limited collection of Jai-Alai programs.  He didn’t have any with history on Retrolaza at Connecticut frontons, but did find a Miami Jai-Alai program from 3/12/1987.  SayHiLi is sure that pelotapress.com site owner Jeff “Laca” Conway can find some more history on Retrolaza competing in Connecticut.  Here is program info Steve M found in the Miami program:

Retrolaza #33, Back-court, 6’ tall, 195 lbs, born 8/11/1964, Spanish Basque

Retrolaza showed a playing history of games 1,2,4,5 with an overall record (GP-W-P-S) of 149-25-21-30.  The % ITM of 0.510 and % Win of 0.168 are well above average.

Don’t miss out on the hot Pelota and Battle Court action in 2023. Be sure to open and/or fund that BetRivers sports betting account for Battle Court and explore the pari-mutuel wagering account options offered by watchandwager.com and mywinners.com.  If your state doesn’t allow Jai-Alai wagers at this time, be sure to partner with a good friend or family member who resides in a state where it’s allowed.  Be sure to check with customer service to see if they allow wagers from your state as the lists change periodically.  If we want to see continued pari-mutuel Jai-Alai  then be sure to help the cause by wagering on this product.  Here are the contact numbers:

Watch & Wager:  (888) 204-9150, on-line wagers only

MyWinners:  (800) 468-2260, on-line and phone wager options, Connecticut only option is MyWinners.

We have also found out from Andrew Blechman there won’t be any more weekly fantasy Jai-Alai contests for Battle Court.  SayHiLi is working on some contest options/ideas for Battle Court and maybe even for Pelota games too with non-monetary prizes of Jai-Alai items including some really nice memorabilia items.  Stay tuned for more on this and be sure to support both short-court and big court Jai-Alai to help with “Keepin’ the Jai-Alive!”

Steve M

Benny Bueno gave his picks for the first round of the Dania Partido Tournament which starts Thursday night, January 5 at the Dania fronton after the 9^th pari-mutuel singles game.  Anyone can hear the complete discussion on the tourney picks scoop by going to Dania’s YouTube Channel for the Sunday, January 1^st games for the between games banter between Benny and announcer Dave LaMont.  Note that Benny claims he’s really bad at picking winners and has given up on making predictions, however, here’s the summary of Benny’s first round partido picks and why.

Match 1, Thursday January 5, #1 Zulaika-Manci vs #8 Etcheberry-Portet

Benny’s Pick:  Zulaika-Manci

Why:  Zulaika is positive, optimistic and has kill-shots, when Jai-Alai takes the next step that Zulaika will be part of the solution

Match 2: Friday January 6, #4 Iturbide-Oyhenard vs #5 Aaron-Laborde

Benny’s Pick:  Iturbide-Oyhenard

Why:  Iturbide is very positive , good on the court and aggressive, Benny doesn’t see Aaron as an aggressive kill-shot guy, players from Aaron’s home town are “volley players”

Match 3:  Thursday January 12, #3 Laduche-Atain II vs #6 Benetrix-Urbieta

Benny’s Pick:  Laduche-Atain II

Why:  Laduche is the hottest of the 4-players and Attain II is a perfect partido partner, says that Benetrix is a bit outmatched by Laduche

Match 4:  Friday January 13, #2 Bixente-Bailo vs #7 Urrutia-Mandiola

Benny’s Pick:  Bixente-Bailo

Why:  Bailo gives it everything he has, also notes that Bixente is a quiet guy off and on the court (guessing this means he won’t let his emotions get the best of him)

SayHiLi Team Assessments

Here are the team records by post position for the (8) partido tourney teams from the start of the meet (Dec 1) through January 1.

Now, here’s the money chart, showing the Post-Position Adjusted (PPA) Weighted Factor for each of the doubles teams.  This special SayHiLi Player/Team assessment tool evaluated the limited team statistical data for how teams should have done based on the posts they had compared to how they actually performed from those posts and also has a weighting for WPS close to the 5-3-1, but not exactly, however it’s an optimized weighting.  You need a special SayHiLi security clearance for any more info on the SayHiLi PPA method is achieved, and those are harder to get than government security clearances….haha.

So, based on the above actual team data Team PPA Factors (last column), here are the SayHiLi predictions:

Match 1:  Seed 1 vs 8, Zulaika-Manci the clear advantage 24.2 to 11.6

Match 2:  Seed 4 vs 5, Iturbide-Oyenhard the clear advantage 23.1 to 15.4

Match 3:  Seed 3 vs 6, Laduche-Atain II the clear advantage 13.8 to 3.4

Match 4:  Seed 2 vs 7, Bixente-Bailo the clear advantage 25.9 to 13.7

Note these selections are the top-seeded selections in each match as were Benny Bueno’s picks for these four first-round partido matches.  Note however, with only 1-month of team data available, there are some issues here with limited data of only 6-13 team pairings.  Low data can result in flawed team assessments and one would wonder about the Benetrix-Urbieta team rating of 3.4, which appears suspect.

There is another SayHiLi team evaluation technique which allows the use of more data.  This involves the Individual Doubles PPA Weighted Method for the Front Court and Back Court player and to average their individual assessments to get an Estimated Team Rating (ETR).  SayHiLi will perform this evaluation (2) different ways, for ALL performances of doubles data and for just the Last 12-performances of doubles data.

Using only the last 12-performances of data for the team estimated assessment makes the Benetriz-Urbieta team a slight favorite over Laduche-Atain II so this could be a very interesting matchup.  This is mostly due to the much improved play by Benetrix in the last 12-performances compared to his season average.  Some notes of interest on Benetrix are two-fold.  Benny mentioned in his between-game sessions on Dania’s YouTube Channel that Benetrix wanted really badly to play at Dania but the slots were filled.  Johan was scheduled to play and backed-out from playing the Dania Invitational as he wanted to play a tourney in Guernica.  Only minutes later from hanging up with the call from Johan, Benetrix called Benny to ask once more about openings and thus secured his position on the roster.  Also, the improved play by Benetrix in the second half of the meet is probably most likely due to breaking his cesta very early in the meet.  Benny has given more details on the Benetrix cesta story on the YouTube banter with the announcers.  Be sure you don’t miss out on the entertaining YouTube scoop from Benny twice a week (Fridays and Sundays)!

So in conclusion, the FINAL SELECTIONS by SayHiLI’s Steve M are the top-seeded teams for Matches 1, 2 and 4, however Steve is taking the Benetrix-Urbieta team in Match 3 on Thursday, January 12.

Be sure to support both short-court and long-court Jai-Alai options in the USA to help keep this great sport alive and have a Happy New Year!  Be sure to catch Magic City’s Battle Court Draft which is slated for Monday, January 9^th (check jaialaiworld.com for latest Battle Court updates along with SayHiLi.com).

Steve M.

Week 2 of the Dania 2022/2023 Dec-Jan Meet/Invitational Tourney ended on Sunday, Dec.11 and here is a summary of some data from the popular trifecta and superfecta pari-mutuel wagering options for the first 99-games at Dania.

• Average $1.00 Trifecta Payoff:  $218.80
• Average Trifecta Pool (before takeout):  $2947
• Average $0.10 Superfecta Payoff:  $109.55
• Average Superfecta Pool (before takeout):  $1371

For comparison purposes, here are Magic City averages on above for all of 2022 (904-games).  Note that Magic City does not have a superfecta on their Pelota (aka pari-mutuel) wagering menu.

• Average $1.00 Trifecta Payoff:  $228.40
• Average Trifecta Pool (before takeout):   $1992

Now, some good news on the Dania front for fans of the sport, the wagering appears to be on the rise as evidenced by some nice betting pools from the weekend of the 2^nd week.  Also shown are largest payoffs for both trifecta and superfecta for the meet-to-date.

• Largest Trifecta Pools:  $4048 and $4222, both on Fri Eve 12/9 games 4,5
• Largest Superfecta Pool:  $1963 on Fri Eve 12/9 game 7
• Largest $1.00 Trifecta Payoff:  $1067.20 for a 2-8-7 on Sat Eve 12/10 game 8
• Largest $0.10 Superfecta Payoff:  $455.25 for 2-6-8-7 on Fri Eve 12/9 game 4

YOUR SUPPORT IS NEEDED IF WE WANT TO SEE MORE JAI-ALAI in the USA!!  If you can’t go to the games and watch them live AND wager on these games or visit the OTB or other venue that has Jai-Alai on their simulcast menu, be sure to open up that account with watchandwager.com or mywinners.com.  IF you can’t bet on Jai-Alai in your state, then TEAM-UP with a friend or family member who resides in a “Jai-Friendly” state to get a wagering account opened-up to do your part to “Help Keep the Jai-Alive” in the USA.  

Also, and most importantly, PLEASE be sure to support BOTH Magic City short-court products and the Dania long-court product.  Magic City has two short-court products (there is Pelota “aka pari-mutuel” and the Battle Court sports betting matches through BetRivers.com) and Dania offers the long-court pari-mutuel product, but who knows, if Dania gets enough support from wagering fans, sports betting matches could become a reality in the future?  This is no time to be picky and choosy on which version of Jai-Alai to support in the USA!  Picky and choosy is only for moms who want Jiff for their kids, lol.  This is a time to be thankful for the TWO Jai-Alai Frontons in the USA and to act quickly if we want to keep the World’s Fastest and Most Fascinating Sport around for years to come!!

Help Keep the Jai-Alive and Happy Holidays!

Steve M, SayHiLi.com

Michael Diaz (player #30 Diaz) and Ronald Madrigal (player #12 RonRon) will not be returning to play at the Magic City Fronton in Miami, Florida for the 2023 season.

According to Stu Neiman, “Diaz experienced lower back issues going into October which necessitated a long scratch and possible surgery.  He told us a 5-year run was great, he was appreciative of the experience and would not accept a contract for 2023.  As of this time he is looking forward to relocating to Colorado with his long-term girlfriend and year-old American Akita.”

Ronald is retiring from action at the Magic City Fronton and will be moving back to California with his family.  Both players will be missed by Magic City Jai-Alai fans and players/staff.  SayHiLi wishes the best for them in the future and they will be missed!

Stay tuned to SayHiLi.com for future updates and some new roster additions for 2023 which will be released by Magic City Fronton in 2023.  Jai-Alai returns in early February with Battle Court starting on Friday, February 3^rd with Pelota games soon to follow.  Battle Court matches with sports betting opportunities will be on Friday night and Monday/Tuesday late afternoon and the traditional Pelota games with pari-mutuel wagering will be Sunday through Tuesday in the early afternoon.

Happy Holidays to ALL!

Steve M

SayHiLi has added a new page to the website with the Battle Court 2022 II Championship Finals results. It’s located under “Other Links.”

Click Here for the BC 2022 II Finals Results

Battle Court Jai-Alai matches and Pelota game performances (aka pari-mutuel wagering events) are set for 2023 and here is the scoop per Stu Neiman on 02-November:

• Battle Court and Pelota from February through mid-December with a mid-season break
• August will be a break from Battle Court & Pelota for some well-deserved time off for players and staff.  August will also be dedicated to the two tournaments;  the 4^th annual USNJAC and the 2^nd annual WSC (World Super Court).
• Action will resume in September and has been extended to mid-December for 2023, which is about a month longer than Magic City schedules we’ve seen in the past.
• There will be two Battle Court drafts, one in January and another for the fall Battle Court season.  January is an off-month, however it will be a practice month for players.
• When action resumes in February the Battle Court schedule will be the same as the current schedule;  Friday 7-pm EST and Mon/Tue 5-pm.  The Pelota games will be Sunday through Tuesday at 1:30-pm.

The roster will be expanded and the Magic City Fronton management has been flirting with the idea of adding a 5^th Battle Court squad.  No details have been released on the roster expansion and SayHiLi does not expect to hear about the final roster additions until January.  Magic City Battle Court matches are alive and well and even expanded to a much larger viewing audience with the ESPN3 live coverage which was added this fall.

Here are a few notes on the current roster:

• Bradley has been back in action and playing in Battle Court matches.  He is not expected to play in the Pelota games the rest of this month.
• Robin has been out with a knee injury and won’t be playing the rest of the year.  He last played on October 4 and will undergo knee surgery in December.  SayHiLi staff wishes him the best for that and a speedy recovery!
• Diaz has been out with a back injury and will be out the rest of this month.  He has been co-announcing with Stu and Andrew during Battle Court matches and providing some interesting tid-bits and banter from the perspective of a Magic City short-court player.

The 2022 Magic City end dates are as follows:

• Battle Court Championship is Friday, Nov. 18
• Pelota games final performance is Wednesday, Nov. 23

Don’t forget the Jai-5 and Mighty Ocho jackpots will be forced-out November 23^rd.  Currently the Jai-5 is $5,822.80 for the Monday, November 7^th performance.  Should this jackpot make it through another 8-performances without a single winning ticket it will be a whopper for the closing day force-out.   Also, the Mighty Ocho, a $1.oo Pick 8 Jackpot wager will pay-out a minimum of $5,000 on the force-out day to those ticket holders with the most winners correctly selected.  The Mighty Ocho has been hit for 8 of 8 correct winners twice since this challenging wager began in May of 2020.

Go to the right side sidebar on this homepage and scroll down for the match scores and results for World Super Court.

The brackets are set for the Finals of the very first $50,000 World Super Court Tourney which concludes at Magic City on October 6^th!  This is a short-court doubles tourney featuring many of the current top professional Jai-Alai players in the world.  All teams had to qualify at one of the four qualifying events to get their shot at the finals field of 8-teams by finishing first or second in a qualifier event.

Erik-Manu were slated to compete, however, a late scratch of Erik has meant a substitution, initially planned to be Carballo.  Carballo had to scratch from the tourney today due to a bicep issue and RonRon is filling the slot and partnering with Manu (aka Ladutxe when at Dania).  The Erik scratch was initially rumored to be a retirement of Erik and moving to Spain where his wife is from (personal reasons), however recent posts on a Jai-Alai chat board indicate Erik wanted special treatment not offered to other participants from outside Magic City…..Erik does not have a home court any more and must certainly be intelligent enough to understand he doesn’t get to make all the rules, or any of them to be realistic. Too much drama being directed away from the 1st ever WSC on that topic unfortunately and Erik is “attempting” damage control (LOL good grief)………moving on, read more about this fantastic WSC event below.

The tourney kicks off at Magic City at noon EST on Thursday with first round matches and semi-finals which follow and then the finals match is scheduled for 5-pm EST Thursday.  The rules are simple and are the same as the Magic City Battle Court matches.  Prize money is a whopping $25,000 for first and $12,000 for second.

Here are the teams on the left-side of the bracket:

• Goixerri-Aratz VS Ikeda-Manny
• Jairo-Nicolas VS Johan-Gorka

Here are the teams on the right-side of the bracket:

• RonRon-Manu VS Douglas-Benny
• Arbe-Lekue VS Inaki-Julen

If you are unable to attend the LIVE matches at Magic City, be sure to watch them at watchjaialai.com.  They can also be viewed on Triple-B Media, FTF (For the Fans), and LaLigaSports.

SayHiLi resident handicapper, Steve M, predicts the finals match will be between the brothers teams of Goixerri-Aratz and Inaki-Julen. Goixerri and Aratz have been playing great lately and Inaki has been playing some awesome Jai-Alai the last several months! This first World Super Court finals event will be an incredible display of doubles match talent that hasn’t been seen in years at Jai-Alai! Don’t miss out on this first historical WSC event! Personally, I’m rooting for the brother team of Douglas-Benny of course!

The 3^rd Annual USNJAC ended on Sunday, August 21^st, with (2) sets of Magic City Jai-Alai brothers making it a complete sweep of the entire $25,000 in Pro Tourney prize money.

Pro Singles Championship:

1^st Place to Inaki defeating Aratz 9-3 to win $7,500, 2^nd Place was $2,500

Pro Doubles Championship:

1^st Place to brothers Goixerri-Aratz over brothers Inaki-Julen 9-6 to win $10,000, 2^nd Place was $5,000

Here is the total Pro Tourney prize money breakdown for these 4-players, all on the Magic City Jai-Alai roster (Note:  Doubles Tourney prize money is split between players):

Inaki – $10,000

Aratz – $7,500

Goixerri – $5,000

Julen – $2,500

Last year Douglas won over Inaki (Dania’s Goitia at that time) in the Pro Singles Finals.  Inaki suffered an injury late in the match, breaking two bones in his hand.  After Dania closed in November 2021, Magic City extended an offer to Goitia to join the Magic City Jai-Alai roster and he was fully recovered and started playing at the start of the 10-week short-season on February 14^th this year.  Inaki has been the hottest singles player in late game feature Pelota games 6 & 8 (pari-mutuel games) over the last 2-months with his leading 22.0% win rate (50-11-6-10).  Inaki also had the highest % ITM for late game Pelota singles in the last 2-months, 54.0%, which was tied with Douglas for the highest.  He proved at the USNJAC Pro Tourney he is indeed one of the top US short-court players in the country, if not the best!

Dania’s top star Erik failed to advance to the Final Four in Pro Singles when he experienced the well-established “Curse of Julen,” losing 7-6.  Julen has a history of surprise upsets and key-point wins over top contenders at Magic City, including both Douglas and Goixerri.  Previously, Erik had won against RonRon 7-4 in Round 2 of the Pro Singles Tourney after given a bye in Round 1.

Other strong contenders; Douglas, Manu, Goixerri and Zulaika surprised many fans by none of them making the Pro Singles Finals.  Douglas, winner of last year’s Pro Singles Tourney had been playing exceptionally well lately, winning both games 6 & 8 of the Pelota games on August 14^th, which was the last day of games before the USNJAC.  Douglas had a bye in Round 1 and then lost to Aratz in the next round 7-6.  Manu had beaten Kubala and then Jairo both by near shut-out scores of 7-1, making it to the Final Four where he got knocked-out by Inaki 7-3.  Likewise, Goixerri, a very strong front-court player and current leader of the Magic City Singles Championship, got a bye in Round 1 and then handily beat the young, back-court player Benny, 7-0, but then failed against the experienced veteran Manu, where Manu won handily by a score of 7-4.  Zulaika won his Round 1 match 7-3 against Masters Singles finalist, Douglas I, the former pro player James Langhans who is father of brothers Matt & Ben Langhans (aka Magic City players Douglas & Benny).  Zulaika then met the Invincible Inaki in Round 2 who quickly sent him packing with a score of 7-1.

The Pro Doubles Championship Sunday turned out to be the (3) Magic City brother teams in the Final Four plus Dania’s best team of Erik-Ladutxe, the 2^nd Place winners in last year’s USNJAC Pro Doubles.  Note that Ladutxe now plays at Magic City Jai-Alai in 2022 under the name Manu, thus the team of Erik-Manu this year.  The brothers teams were; Douglas-Benny (last year’s Pro-Doubles winners), Inaki-Julen and Goixerri-Aratz.  Inaki-Julen out-scored Douglas-Benny 7-4 to reach the Finals and Goixerri-Aratz defeated Erik-Manu 7-3 for the other Finals spot.  Fans were treated to an incredible match ultimately won by Goixerri-Aratz by a score of 9-6.

Congratulations to the Magic City brother winners and a big thanks to Magic City Fronton and sponsors Betrivers & Cigar City Brewing Jai-Alai IPA for this great event which unites the best Jai-Alai players in the USA to display their mastery of the fascinating sport of Jai-Alai!  The announcing team of Stu and Andrew did a fantastic job covering the USNJAC and deserve major kudos along with Scott and Lindsay Savin and the rest of the support crew, including those responsible for the amazing video shots! The back glass wall allows for some close-up angles of Jai-Alai matches that have never been seen before! Be sure to watch the replays on watchjaialai.com if you missed the live Jai-Alai matches over the weekend (tip – click “Browse” on the website).

Magic City Pelota games return on Sunday, August 28^th at 1:30-pm with Jai-Alai H2H Doubles match-ups following at 5-pm.  Be sure to enter the weekly Fantasy Jai-Alai H2H contest and to be there for the live viewing of Pelota and H2H on Sunday the 28^th at the Magic City Fronton if you can make it!  Also, be sure to note the schedule change for Pelota and H2H games starting in September!  No more Sunday Jai-Alai as it’s tough to compete with the NFL.  There are 2022 calendar links on the Magic City website and on SayHiLi.

The 3rd Annual USNJAC starts Friday, here is the link to the press release from Sandra Rodriguez

LINK TO PRESS RELEASE

The 3^rd Annual USNJAC Tourney begins on Friday with the Masters Division on Day 1 (10-am EST start) with finals on Sunday.  The Pro Division won’t start until Saturday (11-am EST start) and concludes on Sunday (noon start on Sunday).

Magic City’s brother team of Douglas-Benny will be defending their 2021 Pro Doubles Championship title.  Last year they conquered the favored Erik-Ladutxe team 9-7 in the finals, taking home 1^st place prize money.  This year should be even better with Ladutxe, known as Manu on the Magic City roster, having grown more accustomed to the Magic City short-court since joining the Magic City roster at the start of 2022 and the young Benny having gained more experience.

The “amazing scoop champ” Douglas will be defending his 2021 Pro Singles Championship title.  Last year Douglas defeated Goitia by a score of 9-4 in the Pro Singles finale.  Goitia, now playing on the Magic City roster as Inaki, was injured in last year’s finale against Douglas.  Inaki has been playing some of his best Jai-Alai at Magic City in recent weeks and Douglas won both late singles games in Pelota action on Sunday, August 14^th, so both appear to be in top form for this weekend’s matches.  Goitia (Inaki) defeated Dania’s Erik last year in the semi-finals by a score of 7-4.  The competition should be even tougher for Erik this year should he accept the challenge.

A new serious contender for the USNJAC Pro Singles Championship title is Goixerri who joined the Magic City roster in early 2022.  Goixerri currently leads the Magic City 2022 Singles Championship with 35-singles wins, an impressive 23.8% wins overall, and has been a super-star in late singles games, however, in the last month he’s been in a slump, winning only two of 26-singles games.  Goixerri could easily be a huge threat in this tournament with some decent prize money at stake!  Currently, Carballo is 2^nd in the Magic City Pelota Singles Championship with 34-wins and Douglas is 3^rd with 29-wins.

SayHiLi will be covering and reporting on the Pro Division results this year, however, will not be covering the Masters Division (amateur).  We expect Jeff “Laca” Conway will be covering that angle with his site, PelotaPress.com, which is the leading site with info and support of US amateur Jai-Alai. SayHiLi will have staff on-site at Magic City Fronton Saturday and Sunday covering the Pro Singles and Doubles matches.

Contestants and match-ups for the 3^rd Annual USNJAC could be released by as soon as Wednesday evening, based on last year, and will be posted on SayHiLi ASAP.  This will be the first year where live attendance is allowed.  Doors open for fans a half-hour before the start time.

Watch the event on watchjaialai.com this year if you cannot attend (not on YouTube JAC like last two years).

Friday night, August 5th, marked the first Battle Court draft selection event for the Battle Court II 2022 season which starts on Friday night, September 23^rd where the Cesta Cyclones face-off against the Chula Chargers.  The draft event took place on the Magic City Jai-Alai fronton court in Miami, Florida at 6:45 pm with each of the 4-squad owners making the final decision on which player to draft to complete their 6-player squads.  Each squad had previously locked-in 3-players from the Battle Court I 2022 season and the remaining 3-players for each squad were selected via the draft process.

Here are the initial 3-players for the squads prior to the draft selection process:

Here is the draft selection order for the 3-remaining players for each squad and the players who were drafted by each squad.

Below is the final grid showing the Round 1-6 players for each of the Battle Court squads:

The selection process started shortly after the event started at 6:45-pm and lasted until the 12^th draft pick which was announced around 7:30-pm EST. 

Singles games for Battle Court H2H matches will involve Round 1-players playing against each other, Round 2 players playing against each other…..down to Round 6 players playing against each other.  Doubles team pairings for each of the 4-Battle Court squads were made by the squads after the live coverage of the event ended, so those aren’t yet available for this article.

The event was broadcast on watchjaialai.com where H2H games can be viewed live on the internet or watched at a later time.  Andrew Blechman announced the event for the on-line viewers while Magic City COO, Scott Savin, announced the draft selections to those in attendance.  There will also be some ESPN3 coverage of Battle Court II H2H matches on Friday nights coming this fall. Here are a few other photos from this first draft event!  Congratulations Magic City fronton on a great and professional event!

Friday night is the First Annual Battle Court Draft for the 2^nd Season of Battle Court Jai-Alai H2H matches which begin on Friday night, September 23 at the Magic City Fronton at Magic City Casino in Miami, Florida.  The draft coverage starts at 6:46-pm EST this Friday, August 5^th, on watchjaialai.com with preliminary info on the draft process and rules.  The draft selections are slated to follow at 7:00-pm EST with Andrew and Pauly announcing the coverage.

The same four Battle Court team names will remain with 3-members of each Battle Court Season 1 team remaining the same while the other 3-team members will be selected according to the draft rules.  This will be quite an event that you won’t want to miss, so be sure to tune in on Friday night at 6:45-pm!  Families and friends of the players along with media were invited to attend this First Annual Battle Court Draft.

Magic City Jai-Alai Battle Court Season 2 will get coverage on ESPN3 this year which is GREAT NEWS for fans of the sport!  Check out the Magic City press release for details here:

https://magiccitycasino.com/press_release/46

Battle Court Teams and 3-members of each prior to draft selections on Friday, August 5th:

Cesta Cyclones – Manny, Ikeda, Carballo

Chula Chargers – Douglas, Jairo, Benny

Rebote Renegades – Goixerri, Aratz, Ben

Wall Warriors – Inaki, Bueno, Nicolas

Here are the (11) doubles teams competing in the H2H Series B Doubles which starts on Sunday, July 17 along with a few comments.  Note that only one team is the same as Series A.

Carballo-Tennessee

Cool Fitness-Manny

CRB-Spinner (played well together last year)

Diaz-Douglas

Flores-Manu

Ikeda-Aratz (should be a tough team, beware)

Inaki-Ben (could be trouble)

Jairo-Kubala (watch out for this duo)

Jeden-Nicolas (were a Series A team this year)

Juice-Goixerri

Robin-Benny (a team to watch)

Sub Team:  Bueno-Julen

Not in H2H doubles:  Bradley, Correa, El Barba, RonRon

The Jackpot Force-Outs proved lucky for one bettor for the Tuesday, July 28^th performance at Magic City Fronton in Miami, Florida.  The bettor hit all (8) winners on their Mighty Ocho ticket to take home the $5,000 guaranteed Jai-Alai Jackpot Wager.  This is the second time in Magic City Jai-Alai history where a bettor has correctly selected all 8-winners on this “mighty difficult” $1.00 Pick 8 wager.

The winning numbers in the sequence were “ 1-2-2-3-2-2-2-3” for races 1-8.  Historically, posts 1-2-3 win the most games for the round-robin format of the Spectacular-7 Jai-Alai games which are featured at Magic City’s 1:30-pm Pelota games, which are games featuring the traditional pari-mutuel wagering bets commonly seen at horse tracks throughout the country.  Statistically, there are 16,777,216 possibilities of outcomes for a Pick 8 wager with 8-betting entries each game, however, many of them are virtually statistically impossible due to the round-robin format plus the fact there are some players who are much stronger than others.

Congratulations to the lucky bettor or bettors scoring this historical win!

Note from the will-pays photo below that posts 3 & 4, Goixerri and Douglas, were both live for 8/8 going into the final leg, the result of the game was 3-4-2.

Mandatory payouts (aka Force-Outs) of both the Jai-5 and Mighty Ocho jackpots are happening on Tuesday, June 28:

Jai-5 is guaranteed to pay out $2,000 MINIMUM to the ticket holder(s) with the most winners correctly selected for races 3-7 for this popular wager! The Jai-5 is a $1 Pick 5 Jackpot Wager.

The Mighty Ocho, a $1 Pick 8 Jackpot Wager, is also guaranteed to pay out a whopping $5,000 MINIMUM to the ticket holder(s) with the most winners correctly selected for races 1-8 on this “mighty” challenging wager!

Put your handicapping skills to test against other bettors on Force-Out Day! Only at Magic City Fronton!!

Check out this June 8 article on the USBETS website where Magic City COO, Scott Savin said the following, “BetRivers executives have told him that wagering is up 30% this season and that the sport has moved into its top 10 by handle, ahead of some of the smaller sports such as Major League Lacrosse, rugby, and darts and just behind the Canadian Football League.”

CLICK HERE for the full USBETS article

Congratulations Magic City Fronton!!

Round 1:

Ikeda-Manny beat Correa-Amigorena:  6-4, 6-3

Jairo-Nicolas beat Robin-Urbieta:  6-3, 6-3

Semi-Final:

Ikeda-Manny beat Zulaika-Arrieta:  6-3, 6-3

Jairo-Nicolas beat Carballo-Arta:  6-1, 6-2

Final:

Ikeda-Manny beat Jairo-Nicolas:  6-5, 5-6, 6-4

(this was a great match between these two teams, be sure to watch the replay)

Both teams proceed to WSC Finals at Magic City

Ikeda-Manny won $2,000

Jairo-Nicolas won $1,000

Note:  the teams of Zulaika-Arrieta and Carballo-Arta had a Bye in Round 1

SayHiLi welcomes back Spinner to the Pelota games this coming Sunday as he makes his 2022 debut in the mid-singles games 3 & 4. Spinner has been sidelined since 11/1/2021 when he was playing H2H doubles and suffered an achilles injury.

The doubles team of Cool Fitness-Spinner were in serious contention for 2nd place in the 3rd Doubles Tournament of 2021 when the injury occurred. Spinner’s 2021 singles game record at the time of his injury was a very respectable 14.1% wins and 48.7% ITM.

Welcome Back Spinner!

Magic City’s popular Jai5 wager was hit by one lucky bettor for $3,227 at Sunday’s matinee performance at Magic City Jai-Alai in Miami, Florida.  This was the first time this Pick 5 Jackpot wager had been hit during the regular Magic City pelota meet this year which started on May 1 and the 123rd time this Jackpot wager has been won by a bettor with the ONLY winning ticket since the wager started in 2019.

The sequence 2-2-1-2-6 for pelota games 3-7 was won by RonRon in games 3 and 4, Juice-Manu in game 5 doubles, Goixerri in game 6 followed by the doubles team of CRB-Douglas in game 7.

Congratulations to the lucky winner!

Check out this press release from Magic City Jai-Alai – CLICK HERE

Take a walk down Jai-Alai’s memory lane below to experience the historical timeline of professional Jai-Alai frontons in the USA along with Jai-Alai fronton photos and beautiful Jai-Alai program cover photos. Photos of betting tickets are also shown for most of the US Jai-Alai frontons along with matchbooks and matchbook covers.

Click HERE to start your journey.

Week 1 of the regular Magic City Jai-Alai Pelota game season just started on May 1 and betting pools are on the rise.  Game 8 of Tuesday’s May 3^rd performance had the largest trifecta pool in the last 3-years with $2,862 wagered on trifectas that game.  The average trifecta pool for all games on Tuesday was $2,481 while the week 1 average was $2,315.  Even some Exacta pools were topping $600 which is very comparable to the Dania fronton to the north when they were last open in November 2021.

The average $1.00 trifecta prices are also notable for 2022 with a $1.00 average trifecta price of $253 for the 256-games YTD which is impressive in the Jai-Alai world.  The addition of seven former Dania players to the Magic City Jai-Alai roster has made handicapping more challenging which is likely the reason for the larger trifecta prices.

The Jai-ly popular Jai-5 wager at Magic City Jai-Alai, a $1.00 Pick 5 Jackpot wager in games 3-7, continues to be more difficult to win as well.  So far in 2022, a single Jackpot winner with all 5-winners correctly selected has only happened twice in 32-performances.  The Jai-5 Jackpot is currently at $1102.80 for Sunday’s performance, however, the $2,000 minimum guaranteed payoff is still in place for a single winning ticket with all 5-games correctly selected.  Since the introduction of the Jai-5 wager during the 2019 Jai-Alai season, the Jai-5 has paid-out the Jackpot to a single winner 122-times.  The largest Jai-5 payoff in Magic City Jai-Alai history is a whopping $27,348 on April 5, 2021.

The Pelota games with pari-mutuel wagering continue on Sunday, May 8^th at 1:30-pm EST.  Fans in live attendance that day receive a FREE Magic City Hustle T-shirt while supplies last.  Also, those in attendance are eligible for the FREE H2H x10 Promo for each of the H2H matches at the 5-pm EST Jai-Alai H2H games.  Sunday features six exciting H2H Doubles matches.  If you haven’t yet seen these H2H matches, you are really missing out!

There is a NEW promo for Jai-Alai H2H at Magic City on Sundays now called “H2H x10.”  This promo replaces the 5 AT 5 promo for the live H2H attendees and works like this and starts May 1:

Basically how it works is you will pick the winner of each match AND the amount of sets each match will go (2 or 3 sets).  If you get BOTH right, you win $10.  This is open for all matches throughout the evening, so if there are 6-matches, you can walk away with $60 max.  This way, if someone comes late, they can still participate.  So each match is an individual “bet.”

Another great promo offered by Magic City Jai-Alai!

Steve M

Entries are up, actually been up for 2-days now for the upcoming Sunday through Tuesday pelota performances at Magic City Jai-Alai in Miami. CLICK HERE in case you don’t know where to find them.

There’s only one roster change for pelota games; Vuelo is no longer on the roster. Cool Fitness is back from his hamstring injury. There is a new player, Chris Flores, on the H2H roster. Chris learned to play at N. Miami Amateur and played two seasons at Calder Jai-Alai.

Get ready for 6-7 games each day of H2H matches after the Pelota games. H2H games start at 5-pm EST and if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for the weekly fantasy contest. The contest has the same prize structure however it got harder as it’s a Pick 18 to Pick 21 each week for the fantasy contest. Look under Other Links here at SayHiLi for more info on the two different weekly contests.

The 2022 short-season ended on Tuesday 4/19 at the Magic City Jai-Alai fronton in Miami, Florida at the Magic City Casino near Miami International Airport. Here is the full report for this incredible Jai-Alai Pelota game meet in the magical city!

Carballo nailed the Golden Cesta Award for the most singles wins in the final week with 4-wins while Nicolas was 2nd with 3-wins. This was Carballo’s 2nd GCA in the last 3-weeks and his 8th GCA since the start of the 2019 season. He is only headed in total Golden Cesta Awards by Douglas with 34 and RonRon with 16. Congratulations Carballo! Click Here for tables showing Golden Cesta Award Stats including the number of Golden Cesta Awards for each player along with a listing of each weekly winner of this award.

The 2022 Singles Championship leader with the most singles wins thru the end of the short-season was Carballo with 20-wins. He currently leads Bueno and Goixerri, both with 15-wins. Ikeda is next with 11-wins, followed by Bradley / Douglas / Jeden with 10-wins each. The Singles Championship continues for all of 2022 which ends in late November. Click Here for weekly updates on the 2022 SIngles Championship.

The 2022 1st Doubles Tournament for the intense Jai-Alai Pelota doubles games ended on Monday 4/17. The team of Ikeda-Bradley took home first prize of $5,000 with 9-wins while Juice-Manu took 2nd place honors and a check for $2,500 with 7-wins. Click Here for weekly updates on the 2022 Doubles Tournaments. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the Doubles Tournaments page for a historical chart showing Doubles Tournament winners along with stats at Magic City Jai-Alai.

The combined singles and doubles game stats for all players is shown for the Jai-Alai traditionalists who are used to seeing stats in this format. Carballo leads 2022 with 27-wins with Goixerri 2nd with 21-wins. Ikeda is 3rd with 20-wins while Bradley & Bueno are right behind with 19-wins. There is no Magic City award at the end of the season for combined wins as singles and doubles games are treated separately. Click Here for weekly updates on the 2022 Combined Singles and Doubles Statistics.

Magic City’s end of the short-season also meant there were Force-Outs (aka mandatory payouts) for the Jackpot wagers on Tuesday 4/19. The Jai-5, a $1.00 Pick 5 Jackpot wager, paid $2,550.10 to each of (3) lucky winners who had 4 of 5 winners correctly selected. There was one ticket live with the first 4-winners which needed the 8-post team of Jeden-Nicolas to score the entire Jackpot of $7,650.40 should they have won. The Mighty Ocho Jackpot wager, a $1.00 Pick 8 wager, paid a handsome $1,000 to each of (5) lucky winners who correctly selected 5 of 8 winners on their tickets. Both wagers continue for the regular season Jai-Alai Pelota games on May 1. Click Here for the full listing of Magic City Big Jackpot Winners which also includes all Force-Out payoffs for Magic City Jai-Alai since 2019 when Jackpot wagers first began.

Monday 4/18 was also a day of interest for Magic City Jai-Alai as the front pad was lowered 4-inches. Monday also marked the return of RonRon to the singles games at Magic City. RonRon had been sidelined due to back issues and ultimately back surgery and a lengthy recovery. He had been playing recently in doubles games but Monday was his first singles game debut. RonRon was injured on July 27, 2021 in game 6. RonRon did get a show on one of his four singles games over Monday and Tuesday. Check out SayHiLi’s Injury Report to keep up-to-date on players. We expect to see Cool Fitness return on May 1 from his hamstring injury and Spinner to return in May or June from his achilles injury. SayHiLi wishes a speedy return to the Jai-Alai professionals!

Jai-Alai action returns on May 1st to Magic City for the Jai-Alai Pelota games at 1:30-pm featuring traditional pari-mutuel wagering along with the 5-pm Jai-Alai H2H matches for the NEW Sports Wagering thru BetRivers. May 1st also features the return of FREE contests; an online fantasy contest covering all 3-days of H2H match action and another one for the Sunday Live fans in attendance for H2H, May 1st.

Be sure to support Magic City Jai-Alai to keep the Jai-Alive!

The Jackpots must be paid-out on Tuesday at the Magic City Pelota games (aka Pari-Mutuel wagering games) to the lucky handicappers who have tickets with the most winners correctly selected for both the Jai-5 and the Mighty Ocho Jackpot wagers.

There are two more performances before the Tuesday Force-Out (aka Mandatory Payout). The Jai-5 is currently above the $2,000 guaranteed minimum and is $2,717.60 going into Sunday’s Pelota games. The Mighty Ocho, a $1.00 Pick 8 Jackpot wager, is at $766.80 but has a $5,000 guarantee which will be the minimum amount paid out on Tuesday to be split among those with the most correct winners of games 1-8. The Jai-5 is also a $1.00 wager and has been hit twice this season by single winning tickets for the Jackpot with payoffs of $2,000 and a huge payoff of $12,426 which is the 2nd largest Jai-5 payoff in Magic City history. Even if the Jai-5 is hit on Sunday or Monday’s Pelota games, there will still be at least $2,000 paid out to be split among lucky handicappers who have the most winners correctly selected for games 3-7.

Click Here for a complete listing of all the Jackpot payouts in Magic City history, including all Force-Out payoffs.

Week 9 of Magic City Pelota games ended on Tuesday April 12 with Goixerri winning his first Golden Cesta Award with 3-singles wins for the week. This is his first GCA since his debut at Magic City Jai-Alai on February 12, 2022. Five other players had 2-wins each. The chart below shows how all players fared in singles games for Week 9.

Carballo leads the Singles Championship for 2022 which concludes at the end of the 2022 season in November. He has 16-wins while Bueno is 2nd with 15-wins. Goixerri is right behind them with 14-wins. See the full Singles Championship data for all players in the table below (players shown alphabetically).

The 1st Doubles Tournament for 2022 concludes on Sunday, April 17th, so there are only two doubles games left in this competition. Be sure to check out the blog post on how this Doubles Tournament is coming down to the wire and there are 5-teams still in contention for the first and second place prize money. The full stats for the 12-doubles teams are shown below.

All Singles and Doubles games combined for all the players are shown below for those who prefer this option.

The Jai-5 Jackpot is growing and must be given away at the end of this short 10-week meet. The mandatory payout of the $1.00 Jai-5 and Mighty Ocho is expected to be on the last day of the meet on Tuesday, April 19th. The Jai-5 currently stands at $2,717.60, well above the $2,000 minimum guarantee for a single winning ticket with all 5-winners correctly selected. The Mighty Ocho, a $1.00 Pick 8 Jackpot wager, is currently $760.80, however the minimum guarantee is $5,000 for a single winning ticket with all 8-winners correctly selected. A Mighty Ocho minimum payout of $5,000 is guaranteed to be split among all ticket holders with the most winners correctly selected on the mandatory payout (aka force-out) day.

Pelota games at Magic City Jai-Alai will resume on Sunday May 1, with a new Doubles Tournament starting that day on games 5 & 7. Be sure to sign up for wagering accounts at watchandwager.com or myWinners (myWinners if you are a Connecticut resident); some state restrictions apply so be sure to check with these ADW providers for the latest info. One can also wager at Magic City LIVE on Sundays or for any of the Pelota game performances at the Magic City Sports Club or other venues listed HERE.

Sunday, April 17^th marks the final day of the 2022 short-meet Pelota games Doubles Tournament and 5 of the 12 tournament teams are still in contention for first or second place prize money with only two doubles games remaining.  Tournament cash prizes are awarded to the top two teams with the most wins.

Currently, the team of Ikeda-Bradley with 9-wins has a 2-win lead over second place contenders Juice-Manu with 7-wins who have a shot at a tie for first should they win both games 5 and 7.  The teams of Carballo-Kubala and Jeden-Goixerri each have 6-wins and a shot at outright 2^nd place should one of them win both games; or a possible tie for 2^nd should they win one game.  Robin-Ben with 5-wins still have a shot at a tie for 2^nd should they win both games 5 and 7.

Tuesday is the final day of the short 10-week Pelota game meet and even though this first doubles tournament of 2022 ends on Sunday, there will still be doubles games on Monday and Tuesday, however a few of the teams will feature different doubles pairings on those days.  There will be a short break in the exciting Jai-Alai action until the Magic City Jai-Alai Pelota and H2H games resume on Sunday, May 1^st.

The table below shows the top teams in contention for the first 2022 Doubles Tournament, post numbers (PN) the teams are playing from for both doubles games 5 & 7 along with comments on their possible outcomes.  Should there be any ties, Magic City COO Scott Savin will be weighing in with the tie-breaker decisions.

Despite not having played competitively on US soil since Dania closed in November last year, the team of Erik-Manu had a strong showing at Magic City in the 2^nd World Super Court qualifying event at Magic City Casino & Jai-Alai in Miami today.  The team of Erik-Manu (also known as the top doubles team of Erik-Ladutxe from Dania) won all 3-matches in straight-set victories over their opponents to capture the top 2^nd qualifier prize of $2,000 along with one of the 8-spots in the $50k World Super Court finals at Magic City on October 13^th where the first place team wins $25,000 and second pays $12,000!

Erik-Manu handily outscored the Filipino team of Robin-RonRon 6-0, 6-0 in the first round match and won 6-5, 6-2 against Jairo-Nicolas in the second round.  The first set against Jairo-Nicolas was won by Erik-Ladutxe after Jairo lost his footing when they were tied at 5-5.  That first set was a 21-minute set which is one of the longest sets in H2H style Jai-Alai matches where there’s 3-sets to a match, with sets to 6-points (first team to 6-points wins the set), and the first team to win 2-sets wins the match.

The Magic City Jai-Alai brother’s team of Inaki-Julen (also known as Goitia-Julen, Goitia the name Inaki played under at Dania) faced off against Erik-Manu in the final match of the 2^nd WSC Qualifier after they had beaten Bueno-Nicolas and Carballo-Arta.  This was another great match for viewers and did not come easy for Erik-Manu who won the first two sets 6-3 and 6-5, almost going to a 3^rd set.  Inaki-Julen also advance to the WSC Finals at Magic City on October 13^th and won the 2^nd place prize of $1,000 for their incredible effort today.

The 3^rd match in today’s first round was an outstanding match of abilities between Dania’s Zulaika-Arrieta and Magic City player Carballo paired with Arta and is a must see match for fans around the world of all types of Jai-Alai.  The Magic City team of Carballo-Anderluck was initially slated to play, but was changed early in the week to Carballo-Arta when Anderluck scratched for the 2^nd WSC event.  The 6’3” Arta had played at Dania in both front court and back court positions in early games and in the last month has done judging for Magic City Jai-Alai.  The Carballo-Arta team had little practice together and lost a hotly contested first set 6-5 against Zuliaka-Arrieta, both late game Dania players, however, Carballo-Arta won the next two sets 6-3, 6-5, winning the match to proceed further in today’s qualifier.  They lost their next match in 2-sets, 4-6 and 1-6, to the Magic City brother’s team of Inaki-Julen.  Teams that won their first round sets today are eligible to compete again in future qualifiers if there are open spots.

The Erik-Manu team has vast experience playing together and is considered one of the best, if not the best, Jai-Alai doubles teams in the world.  Their late game doubles team record playing in pari-mutuel games at Dania from September of 2018 through November of 2021 is impressive when one considers there are 8-teams in each pari-mutuel game played.  The late game team record is 151-53-29-20 for an incredible 35.1% wins while an average team would have 12.5% wins, thus Erik-Manu were 2.8-times better than the average late-game team at Dania.

Today’s two qualifying teams will join the two brother’s teams of Goixerri-Aratz and Douglas-Benny who qualified at the 1^st WSC Qualifier event at Magic City on February 16^th.   The 3^rd Qualifier is at Magic City on June 8^th at 3-pm EST and the 4^th Qualifier is expected to be at a location in Spain in September, exact date/time TBD, at a court similar in size to the Magic City fronton short-court (120’ long x 40’ wide).

To view the replay of the WSC Qualifier II on watchjaialai.com, CLICK HERE

Here is a detailed scoring of all the matches for this 2^nd WSC Qualifier event, compliments of SayHiLi.com’s Battle Court / H2H Jai-Alai Sports Writer Jabracadabra (aka Joel A.):

Another incredible week of Magic City pelota games concluded on Tuesday, April 5^th at Magic City Jai-Alai at the Magic City Casino in the Magical City of Miami, Florida.  The exciting Jai-Alai action keeps getting better and better!

Carballo won the Golden Cesta Award for week 8 for the most singles wins for the week, scoring wins in 3 of his 8-singles games.  This is his 7^th GCA in his Magic City Jai-Alai career and that secures him the spot of 3^rd most GCA’s right behind Douglas with 34 and RonRon with 16.  Click Here to view the Golden Cesta Award history for Magic City Jai-Alai.

The team of Carballo-Kubala also scored victories in 3 of their 4-doubles games for week 8 in the first doubles tournament of 2022.  This is significant as they now have 6-team wins in this big money tournament and are only 1-win behind the teams of Ikeda-Bradley and Juice-Manu which have 7-wins each.  Since this tourney ends on Sunday, April 17^th there are only 4-days left in the tourney which means each of the 12-tourney teams has only 5 or 6 chances left to win a doubles victory.  The first place team wins $10,000 while the second place team splits $5,000.  Click Here to view the complete doubles team chart for the first tourney for 2022.

Carballo leads the 2022 singles championship for the player with the most singles wins for the year.  He currently has 15-singles wins and Bueno is on his tail with 14-wins.  Third place with 11 wins is Goixerri.  Click Here to view the complete singles wins chart for 2022.

The combined singles and doubles records is shown below for those fans who like to mix the talents of the Magic City roster.  This chart also shows Carballo, Carballo and Carballo for most wins, top % Wins and top % ITM, plus an amazing 48.2% in-the-quiniela!

Steve M.

The $50K World Super Court 2nd qualifying event will be held at the Magic City Casino Jai-Alai fronton on Wednesday, April 13th at 3-pm. Here are the teams for the first 4-matches which were drawn today for the first round of the qualifier event on Wednesday:

Erik-Manu vs Robin-RonRon

Jairo-Nicolas vs Jeden-Ben

Zulaika-Arrieta vs Anderluck-Carballo

Inaki-Julen vs Bueno-Kubala

These matches will be played using the H2H format and can be seen on watchjaialai.com. There will be a total of 7-matches on Wednesday. The top two teams will advance to the WSC Finals where they will join the teams of Goixerri-Aratz and Douglas-Benny who qualified at the 1st WSC Qualifier. The 3^rd Qualifier is on June 8^th at Magic City and the 4^th Qualifier is slated for a date TBD in September in Spain on a court of similar size to Magic City.  The World Super Court Finals featuring the top 8-teams is October 13^th at Magic City.   The World Super Court Finals first place team wins $25,000 while the 2^nd place team wins $12,500.  World Super Court can be viewed on all platforms except YouTube’s The Jai-Alai Channel which is reserved for Magic City Pelota (pari-mutuel games).

Steve M.

Ikeda won the Golden Cesta Award for Week 7 for the Magic City Casino pelota games (aka pari-mutuel games) by scoring 3-victories in his 6-singles games.  Three other players were tied with 2-wins; Bueno, Carballo and Manu.  This was Ikeda’s 5^th Golden Cesta Award since joining the Magic City roster (Click Here for Golden Cesta stats)

Bueno, Carballo and Douglas had the highest %ITM for the week in singles with 66.7% each.  Overall highest singles win % for the year in singles is held by Carballo with 28.6%.  Carballo also has the highest % ITM and and % ITQ (in the quiniela or win/place combined).  Current leaders of the 2022 Singles Championship are Bueno and Carballo with 12-wins each followed by Goixerri with 10-wins and Douglas with 9-wins.  The latest week ending singles stat chart is shown HERE (under Wagering Info, Entries Results Stats & More, Magic City Singles Championship). The Singles Championship ends in November.

The doubles team of Juice-Manu had the best record for the week with two wins and a place in their four appearances while Anderluck-Benny were next best with one win and two places in their four appearances.  Overall in this first doubles tourney for 2022 which ends 4/19, the teams of Ikeda-Bradley and Juice-Manu are tied for the lead with 7-wins each.  Next best is Jeden-Goixerri with 5-wins followed by Anderluck-Benny and Robin-Ben with 4-wins each.  Each team has just 12-games left to play before this first tournament ends, so we expect some more great action-packed doubles games till the end.  The stat chart for the first tourney through 3/29 is shown HERE (under Wagering Info, Entries Results Stats & More, Magic City Doubles Tournaments).

Overall singles and doubles stats are shown below.  Carballo leads with 16 total wins and 4-players are tied with 15; Bradley, Bueno, Goixerri and Ikeda.  Ikeda leads with 23.1% for the highest win percentage and also has the highest % ITM with 55.4%.  The combined stats are shown below:

The Jai5 Jackpot was nailed by one lucky bettor on Monday’s pelota games for $12,426 so the Jackpot wager started out anew for Tuesday with the $2,000 minimum guarantee.  The mandatory payout for the Jai5 and the Mighty Ocho is the last day of the 2022 initial short meet on Tuesday, April 19^th.

Steve M.

READ IT HERE

One lucky bettor nailed the $1.00 Jai-5 Jackpot wager at Magic City Jai-Alai in Miami for a cool $12,426 at Monday’s pelota performance on Monday, 3/28.  This was the second largest payoff in Magic City history since the challenging Jackpot wager began in 2019.  The Jackpot had swelled to $9,690.80 going into today’s performance and had gone 15-performances without a single winner since last won on February 20th for $2,000. 

The winning numbers were 7-1-2-6-8 for games 3-7.  Ikeda, a crowd favorite and strong mid-games singles player, won both game 3 and game 4 singles to kick-off the sequence.  Game 5 doubles game was won by the team of Juice-Manu from the lucrative 2-post.  Game 6 late game singles, a feature game with the strongest players, was won by Douglas in a perfect runout style from post 6.  The game 7 finale, another doubles game, was also a perfect game runout by the team of Anderluck-Nicolas from post 8.  Anderluck was substituting for Diaz in the front court who was scratched for today’s games.

All posts were covered for a 5 of 5 winner except for post 7, the team of Bueno-Julen, which would have paid $71.90 for a 4 of 5 consolation payoff had they won the game.  Posts 1 and 4 had multiple tickets with 5 of 5 winners had they won.  The Jackpot Jai-5 would have carried-over to Tuesday’s performance had the 1,4 or 7 post won the game.  The Jai-5 Jackpot wager rules dictate there must be a SINGLE winning ticket with 5 of 5 winners for the entire jackpot to be paid out.  Had post 1 won the game it would have paid a consolation payout of $683.80 to 2-different winners while post 4 would have paid a consolation payout of $455.80 to 3-different 5 of 5 winners.  Posts 2,3,5,6,8 were all single winning ticket will-pays for $12,426 each.  A total of $3,419 was wagered on the Jai-5 for Monday’s performance.

The Jackpot wager starts out at $0 for Tuesday’s pelota performance at 1:30-pm EST, however, it has a minimum guaranteed Jackpot of $2,000 should there be a single winning ticket with 5 of 5.

SayHiLi.com website shows a complete listing of all the BIG PAYOFFS during the history of Magic City Jai-Alai for both the Jai-5 and the Mighty Ocho Jackpot wagers.

Steve M.

The $1.00 Jai-5 wager at Magic City Jai-Alai pelota games could pay over $12,500 at the Monday matinee today should a single winner hit all 5-winners correctly!  Currently, the jackpot carryover for the Jai-5 stands at $9,690.80 and if Monday’s bettors pour in another $3,553 like they did on Sunday’s Jai-5, the wager could pay the 2^nd highest price ever in Magic City history.  There were (6) winning tickets at Sunday’s pelota games that paid a consolation payoff of $236.80 each for having 4 of 5 winners correctly picked.

Sunday marked the 15^th consecutive performance where no bettor successfully won the ONLY winning ticket with 5 of 5 winners.  There were no live tickets 4 of 4 going into the game 7 wager finale on Sunday for the Jai-5 wager which is games 3-7.  The previous record number of performances without a winner was 16-consecutive performances back in 2021 from 2/28 – 4/4.  The record Jai-5 paid $27,348 to one lucky winner the following day on 4/5/2021.

The 2^nd largest Jai-5 payoff in Magic City history was $12,220 on 11/13/2019 and today’s Jai-5 looks like it could break that record if someone scores the big win today.  The 3^rd largest Jai-5 payoff was $11,746.40 on 8/17/2021.  SayHiLi.com website shows a complete listing of all the BIG PAYOFFS during the history of Magic City Jai-Alai for both the Jai-5 and the Mighty Ocho Jackpot wagers.

The Jai-5 wager is a “low takeout” wager with 20% of the total amount wagered for the performance going to the house for expenses and state fees, 40% going to consolation payoffs and the other 40% getting added to the Jackpot carryover.  Typical takeout rates for most Jai-Alai pari-mutuel wagers are 25% (excluding win/place/show bets which are lower yet), however Magic City offers the low takeout rate of 20% for Daily Doubles, Pick 3’s, plus the Jai-5 and Mighty Ocho (the$1.00 Pick 8 Jackpot wager).  When a bettor holds the ONLY winning ticket 5 of 5, they get the carryover jackpot plus 80% of what was wagered on the Jai-5 for that performance.

Stay tuned for more on this rapidly growing Jai-5 Jackpot!  Only at Magic City Casino and Jai-Alai in Miami, Florida!!

Steve M.

Here’s some Jai-5 statistics since its debut in August 2019:

2019 – 2021: 454 Jai-5 events

29x multiple 5/5 winners (6.4%)

120x single 5/5 winner (26.4%)

2022: 17 Jai-5 events, harder to win with more balanced roster

1x multiple 5/5 winners (5.9%) hit on 1st day of season

1x single 5/5 winner (5.9%) hit 3rd day of season with only $488 total wagered

Based on these 471 Jai-5 events overall from 2019 thru 2022 to date, it’s approximately four times more likely there will be a single winner 5/5 vs multiple winners 5/5.

471 total Jai-5 events produced (30) multiple 5/5 winners and (121) single Jackpot winners.

Based on 2022 history to date, it’s unlikely the Jai-5 Jackpot will be hit tomorrow, but should it be hit it’s more likely to pay closer to $10k than $9k to a single winner as the carryover is $8,269.60 and 80% of what’s wagered gets added to the carryover if there’s a single winner.  Through the grapevines I’ve heard there will be some significant action on Jai-5 Sunday, but I would still be surprised if 5/5 is hit with the talent level change for 2022 making it more challenging compared to the past.  It’s definitely a very high risk wager because the most you can collect if you aren’t the single winner 5/5 is 40% of what is wagered if you hold ALL of the consolation tickets for 3/5 or 4/5 (very doubtful it pays 2/5).  In the unlucky event you and one other person each have 5/5, the most you can collect for the 5/5 consolation is 20% of what is wagered that day.

Another point of interest is consolations with 3 of 5 winners paid out on 21.4% of events for 2020 – 2021 while 2022 so far has paid on 3 of 5 winners for 21.4% of events.

Steve M (aka straymar)

Another great week of exciting Magic City Jai-Alai concluded Tuesday, March 22nd with CRB capturing the Golden Cesta Award for the most singles wins for the week. His two wins in his six singles games along with a 66.7% ITM was enough to edge-out the victory against Carballo who also had 2-wins and tied with highest win percentage, but fell short on the ITM tie-breaker with 50%. Congratulations to CRB for his solid play which paid-off in week 6!

Here are the singles stats for 2022 through March 22nd for all players. The %ITQ stat (in the Quiniela) has been added to the far right column to assess top two finishes for the players. Three players are tied with 10-wins in the 2022 Singles Championship which is won by the player with the most wins for the year; Bueno, Carballo and Goixerri. Carballo has an incredible 58.3% for top two finishes while Goixerri is 2nd with a respectable 47.1%

The action-packed doubles games (games 5 & 7) also referred to as “Dodging Death” at Magic City Jai-Alai continue to be led by Ikeda-Bradley with (6) team wins while Juice-Manu have closed-in with (5) team victories through Tuesday. Jeden-Goixerri are third with (4) wins and three other teams have (3) wins each. Here is a snapshot comparing all 12-teams in this first 2022 Doubles Tournament.

This next data snapshot combines singles and doubles games for all players and currently two players are leading with 14-wins; Carballo and Goixerri.

The Jai-5 Jackpot wager was not won during Week 6 and has $8,269.60 in the jackpot carryover for Sunday’s March 27th performance when exciting Pelota Games with pari-mutuel wagering returns for Week 7 at Magic City Casino & Jai-Alai in Miami. The largest Jai-5 in Magic City history was won by one lucky bettor for a whopping $27,348 last year! You must be the ONLY winner to score the entire jackpot on this popular wager. CLICK HERE for the BIG JACKPOT PAYOFF HISTORY at Magic City Jai-Alai.

Steve M (aka straymar)

The owner of the winning Battle Court squad earns $50,000 for the charity of their choice.  READ MORE HERE!

Week 5 of the 2022 pelota games 10-week short-meet just concluded on March 15 at Magic City Casino.  The Magic City 10-week short-meet started on February 14 and concludes on April 19^th, however there is much more exciting Jai-Alai that continues through November.  Here is the latest scoop and stats on these pelota games, also known as the pari-mutuel wagering games,  which are Sunday through Tuesday with eight action-packed games each day at 1:30-pm EST.

Jai-5 Jackpot ($1.00 Pick 5 wager) is now at $5,436.80 and hasn’t been won for 11-consecutive performances.  This jackpot bet is starting to get some big action.  The entire jackpot can only be paid out when there is a single winner with all 5-winners correctly selected from games 3-7.  One bettor had the 6-post live in game 7 on Tuesday’s performance, the team of Ikeda-Bradley, to take down the entire jackpot.  Ikeda-Bradley needed to win two more double points (4-points more) in this game for that bettor, but were unable to score the win so the jackpot survives for Sunday, March 20 and could possibly pay over $7,000.  There were three winning tickets paying a consolation payoff on 4/5 winners for a healthy $313.40 each on Tuesday.

Juice scored his first singles game win for 2022 and treated fans to one of his famous back-flips; gotta love the energy and excitement when Juice wins!  There are still three players who have yet to win their first singles game win for 2022; Kubala (0 for 28), Nicolas (0/26) and El Barba (0 for 12).  El Barba only recently returned two weeks ago after missing the first three weeks while recovering from a knee procedure in the off-season.

The Golden Cesta Award, a non-monetary award to the player(s) with the most singles games for the week found the first time occurrence of 3-players who each had 2-wins, were all tied with the highest win % (33.3) and tied with the highest % ITM (50.0).  Those players were Goixerri, Jeden and Robin.  Goixerri was eliminated on a 3rd tiebreaker of place % as Jeden & Robin each had a place, but Goixerri didn’t but had a show finish. Congratulations Jeden and Robin!  Golden Cesta Award summary and weekly results are shown here on SayHiLi site:  Link for Golden Cesta Awards

The 2022 short-meet Singles Championship is currently being led by Bueno with 10-wins (10 of 37).  Goixerri is second with 9-wins (9 of 28) and Carballo is third with 8-wins (8 of 30).  Magic City superstar Douglas is currently fourth with 7-wins (7 of 28).  Bueno is an above-average mid-games player who plays in games 3 and 4.  Bueno had been benefiting on singles wins by filling in for El Barba in early game singles (games 1,2) due to Barba’s late start at the beginning of the meet and by substituting for Cool Fitness in those same early games because of Cool’s hamstring injury.  Bueno has scored half of his 10-singles wins in early games (5 of 11 in early games).

Note that the entries for the upcoming week do not have Bueno listed as playing in games 1 or 2 nor is he listed as a substitute for those games.  Mid-game players Anderluck and Kubala are playing in games 1 and 2 for Cool Fitness and mid-game players Bradley and Ben are listed as the program subs for those games in this coming week.  The return date for Cool Fitness is TBD.

Juice not only scored his first singles win in Week 5, but the doubles team of Juice-Manu were the only team to score two victories in the first 2022 doubles tournament which spans the 10-week short meet.  Each of the 12-teams plays four times during the six doubles games each week.  The Ikeda-Bradley team still lead the tourney with 5-wins after getting off to a quick start early in the season.  Second place is held by Jeden-Goixerri with 4-wins.  Third place is a 3-way tie between Anderluck-Benny, Carballo-Kubala and Juice-Manu.  The only winless teams are Diaz-Nicolas (0 for 17) and Cool Fitness-Aratz (0 for 7).  Cool Fitness and partner Aratz only had 7-appearances when Cool suffered his hamstring injury.

Here are some more stats for the short-season to date:

Singles games % ITM leaders:  Carballo 66.7%, Goixerri 60.7%, Ikeda 53.8%

Doubles games % ITM leaders:  Inaki-Tennessee 55.0%, Ikeda-Bradley 52.6%, Jeden-Goixerri 47.4%

Overall games % Wins:  Goixerri 27.7%, Carballo 23.5%, Ikeda 22.2%

Overall games % ITM:  Carballo 58.8%, Goixerri 55.3%, Ikeda 53.3%

Don’t forget to get your FREE fantasy contest entry in for the 15-Battle Court H2H matches for Sunday through Tuesday for the coming week! Should you get all 15-winners there’s a $1,000 cash prize (split if multiple winners).  Also, attend the live performance on Sunday for pelota games and the awesome H2H matches where H2H attendees get a FREE shot at the “5 AT 5” contest where contestants who pick all 5-match winners split $1,000.  Plus, don’t forget about the big Jai-5 Jackpot for Sunday’s pelota games!

Steve M.

Magic City’s Scott Savin now reaches even more Jai-Alai viewers through Twitch, an interactive livestreaming service for content spanning gaming, entertainment, sports, music, and more.  Fans can watch and listen to pelota game player, El Barba (Dennis Dalton), along with former Jai-Alai announcer, Paulie, and chat with them while watching live H2H sports betting games at Magic City.  Paulie is the originator of the Jai-Alai announcing phrase “the pad is bad.”  Paulie is also known for saying “macho picchu” when shots hit OB into the upper screen.

I signed up for Twitch yesterday morning to join the chat for Monday’s H2H games to find out more.  The FREE sign-up was easy and after going to https://www.twitch.tv/watchjaialai.

The duo is featured in a small screen on the bottom left of the H2H live-match screen where fans can watch the matches, watch them and hear them, while still hearing Stu and Andrew announcing at a lower volume in the background.  Viewers who have signed-up can even join the chat and ask El Barba and Paulie questions and get answers.  This is your opportunity to ask this Twitch Jai-Alai announcing duo your Jai-Alai questions and read what the other chatters are saying.  Yesterday was National Pi Day and El Barba even gave his top 10 types of pie in a countdown from 10 to 1 during the broadcast.  The pair is also evaluating the best doubles match plays in an interesting way and you will have to check-in to find out more about that!  Turns out El Barba even knows a lot about Bitcoin.

All in all I found it interesting and today El Barba will be announcing the teams for the 2^nd World Super Court qualifier at Magic City on April 13^th at 3-pm EST.

Steve M.

Sunday Match 2 – Ben vs Jeden

Betrivers has Jeden favored to win (-127 vs +103).  Jeden plays the early games for the pelota games while Ben is a mid-game player.  Ben makes some amazing catches and won most-improved player for Magic City’s 2021 meet.  Not surprised if Ben upsets in this match.

Sunday Match 5 – Joseph-Manu vs Robin-Ben

Betrivers has Robin-Ben favored to win (-155 vs +125). Manu is former Dania player Ladutxe, one of the top back-court Jai-Alai players in the world and he’s been adjusting better to the Magic City short-court in his recent games.  This match is closer than the betting line indicates and should be a good one!

Monday Match 1 – Julen vs Robin

Betrivers has Julen favored to win (-125 vs +100).  Look for a possible upset here as Robin, a former Dania player, is a shot-maker looking to end the point quickly with his kill shots.  Even though Julen is a late-game Magic City pelota player and Robin is a mid-game player, Julen is one of the weaker late-gamers while Robin is in the upper half of mid-gamers.

Monday Match 4 – Goixerri-Kubala vs Inaki-Nicolas

Betrivers has a slight edge for Inaki-Nicolas (-118 vs -106).  This should be an awesome match to watch and is almost a virtual tie on the betting line.  The Goixerri-Kubala team showed great teamwork in their last match and will be a tough cookie to crumble.  Goixerri had the most overall wins in the Magic City pelota games last week and is tied with the amazing Douglas for most wins in the feature pelota singles games (games 6&8) for 2022 to-date.  Both Inaki and Nicolas have been finding their groove and playing better too.  Flip the coin on this match.

Tuesday Match 2 – CRB vs Jeden

Betrivers gives the edge to Jeden (-134 vs +108).  CRB is currently in the top two players for early game pelota games at Magic City and has been out-performing Jeden in those games (games 1&2).  Jeden’s strength sometimes finds him making unforced errors.  This match is much closer than the betting line indicates. 

Tuesday Match 5 – CRB-Douglas vs Jeden-Manny

Betrivers gives the edge to CRB-Douglas (-125 vs +100).  CRB-Douglas are also teamed for the Magic City pelota games first doubles tournament for the 2022 short-meet.  They are ranked 11^th of 12 teams for ITM finishes (in-the-money) so far since the Feb 14^th opening day and have been struggling.  Douglas is a top player at Magic City while Manny is perhaps one of the best catchers, waiting for opponents to make a mistake.  This match will be one to watch with the amazing court-positioning abilities of both Douglas and Manny.  Flip a coin on this doubles match too.

Magic City’s popular Pelota games and Battle Court H2H Jai-Alai matches continue with Week 5 of the incredible action on Sunday at 1:30-pm EST for Pelota games (aka pari-mutuel wagering games) and 5-pm EST for the Battle Court H2H matches.  H2H Jai-Alai matches are Head-to-Head matches between two singles players or two doubles teams and represent the new and exciting sports betting version of Jai-Alai wagering that has been spreading and increasing in popularity.  Both of these versions of Jai-Alai are played at Magic City Casino on Sunday through Tuesday and live customer viewing is allowed on Sunday only with doors opening at 1-pm.

Jai-Alai Pelota wagering can be done at the Magic City Sports Club or in the Jai-Alai fronton area on Sundays, numerous simulcast sites and with on-line ADW betting services watchandwager.com and mywinners.com (some state restrictions apply).

Sports betting at this time is exclusively through Betrivers.com and is currently approved and operating in the states of AZ, CO, IA, IL, NJ, PA, VA. Betting on Jai-Alai is similar to betting on tennis, or even ping-pong. You can bet on match winners, as well as set winners, point winners, point totals, take advantage of sports betting bonuses, and more. Here’s the variety of Jai-Alai betting markets on BetRivers for H2H games:

• Match Winner odds (Moneyline)
• Set # Winner (Moneyline)
• Point # Winner (Moneyline)
• Over/Under Points in Set # (Total)
• Set Betting, i.e. 2-0, 2-1, 1-2 or 0-2 (Moneyline, index style)
• Set Score Handicap  (Spread)
• First to get 3 points in a Set (Moneyline)

Stay tuned to SayHiLi.com for the latest Magic City news, stats, jackpot carryovers and more.

Steve M.

Here’s a good read in USBETS on Magic City Jai-Alai, 2/15/2022 article

The exciting Magic City pelota games concluded another week on Tuesday, March 8.  Bueno captured the Golden Cesta Award for back-to-back weeks now by winning 3-singles games in his 8-appearances for week 4. The award goes to the player winning the most singles games for the week.  This is Bueno’s 6^th GC award since joining the roster at the start of the 2019 season.  He joins an elite group of four other players with 6-GC Awards in their Magic City careers; Anderluck, Ben, Carballo and El Barba.  Douglas leads with 34 awards and RonRon is second with 16 awards.  Currently, the pelota game players compete in 6-singles games each week if there are no scratches.  Note that “Pelota” is a distinction used by Magic City which started this year to distinguish between the Magic City Jai-Alai pari-mutuel games (pelota games) and the H2H games with sports wagering.

El Barba is back and plays in early game singles (ga 1,2).  He lost a game point for a win but did manage to place in one of his 6-appearances, but was struggling on his first day back from knee surgery plus was trying to break-in a new cesta.  RonRon was back and has been featured in doubles games only for starters.  The team of Vuelo-RonRon played in 5-games and had a respectable win and a place.  Their place came on RonRon’s first game back since being out since July 27^th of last year (back issues).  Cool Fitness was scratched for week 4 and is not listed in the week 5 entries due to his hamstring injury.

Bueno currently leads the Singles Championship with 8-wins with Douglas and Goixerri on his tail with 7-wins, fighting it out in the late feature singles where the two best late players have a combined 14-wins in 22 late singles feature games for 2022 (a combined 63.3% wins in games 6/8).  Ikeda-Bradley continue to lead the first 2022 Doubles Championship with 5-wins, a two win lead over the second place teams of Anderluck-Benny and Jeden-Goixerri with 3-wins each.

Pari-mutuel betting pools continue their rise in popularity for 2022.  Trifecta pools are averaging nearly $2100 per game for the week and exacta pools have grown significantly too.  The average exacta pool for week 3 was $430 with a record high of $610 for Tuesday’s game 8 feature game.  The trifecta average $1 payoff was a respectable $217 for week 4 over the 24-games, down from the week 3 average but the average $1 trifecta price for 2022 remains a whopping $261.60!  Sunday’s late Pick 3 pool was a 2022 record at $883 where one lucky winner scored for $705.60 for the $1 ticket! Don’t forget that Magic City Jai-Alai offers $0.50 trifecta wagers and $1.00 Quiniela/Exacta/Win/Place/Show betting, plus the low takeout rate of 20% on their Pick-X wagers which includes the $1 Mighty Ocho (Pick 8 Jackpot game 1), $1 Jai-5 (Pick 5 Jackpot game 3), $1 Pick 3 (two of them, games 2 & 6) and the early $2 Daily Double game 1.  The late Daily Double was dropped from the Magic City wagering menu.

Here are the players leading the pelota game stats for 2022 thru week 4:

All Singles and Doubles Games Combined for 2022 – highest win %:

1. Goixerri 27.0%
2. Ikeda 25.7%
3. Bueno 23.8%
4. Bradley 23.4%
5. Carballo 23.1%

All Singles and Doubles Games Combined for 2022 – highest ITM %:

1. Ikeda 60.0%
2. Goixerri 56.8%
3. Carballo 56.4%
4. Inaki 50.0%
5. Bradley 44.7%

Singles only for 2022 – highest win %:

1. Douglas / Goixerri 31.8% (7 wins in 22 ga)
2. Bueno 28.6% (8 wins in 28 ga)
3. Carballo 27.3% (6 wins in 22 ga)
4. Ikeda 20.0% (4 wins in 30 ga)
5. Bradley 19.4% (6 wins in 31 ga)

Early Game Singles (ga 1,2) – highest win % (excludes mid-game sub players):

1. Tennessee 18.2%
2. CRB 13.6%

Early Game Singles (ga 1,2) – highest ITM % (excludes mid-game sub players):

1. Cool Fitness and CRB 50.0%
2. Jeden 36.4%

Mid Game Singles (ga 3,4) – highest win %:

1. Carballo 27.3%
2. Bueno / Ikeda 20.0%

Mid Game Singles (ga 3,4) – highest ITM%:

1. Ikeda 65.0%
2. Carballo 63.6%

Late Game Singles (ga 6,8) – highest win%:

1. Douglas / Goixerri 31.8%
2. 3-players tied  9.1%

Late Game Singles (ga 6,8) – highest ITM%:

1. Goixerri 63.6%
2. Douglas / Inaki 50.0%

Doubles Tourney #1 (ga 5,7) – highest win %:

1. Ikeda-Bradley 33.3%
2. Jeden-Goixerri / Vuelo-RonRon 20.0%
3. Anderluck-Benny 18.8%
4. Bueno-Julen 14.3%
5. Robin-Ben 13.3%

Doubles Tourney #1 (ga 5,7) – highest ITM%:

1. Ikeda-Bradley 53.3%
2. Inaki-Tennessee 50.0%
3. Jeden-Goixerri 46.7%
4. Carballo-Kubala / Diaz-Nicolas 43.8%
5. Juice-Manu / Vuelo-RonRon 40.0%

Doubles  Tourney #1 – Most Wins:

1. Ikeda-Bradley – 5
2. Anderluck-Benny / Jeden-Goixerri – 3
3. 3-other teams – 2

Singles Championship for Early 2022 Meet  – Most Wins:

1. Bueno – 8
2. Douglas / Goixerri – 7
3. Bradley / Carballo – 6
4. Ben – 5

Get ready for Week 5 of exciting pelota game action from Magic City Jai-Alai in Miami, Florida on Sunday, March 13^th at 1:30-pm EST.  Fans will be on edge to see if El Barba scores his first win in his second week back from knee surgery.  He’s definitely getting off the court quicker now!  Fans are allowed in the Jai-Alai fronton area only for Sunday’s games and also for the incredible Battle Court H2H games which follow at 5-pm EST.   Should you reside in south Florida or planning a trip there be sure to take advantage of the Sunday H2H promo “5 At 5” where you could win up to $1,000 for correctly selecting the 5-winners of the Battle Court H2H matches at 5-pm and it’s FREE to enter.  Don’t forget to enter the FREE online H2H contest for the 15-matches from Sunday thru Tuesday where the top cash prize is $100 if you are the only winner with the most correct selections.

The Jai-5 jackpot wasn’t won in week 4 and has grown to $3,468 for the Sunday, March 13 opener for week 5. Big jackpot fans won’t want to miss out on this!

Steve M (aka straymar)

Magic City Jai-Alai player Manu, formerly known as Ladutxe from Dania, won his first singles game for the new meet, not only winning game 6 but also game 8 singles for the pelota games (aka pari-mutuel wagering games).  Manu had struggled at the start in the late feature singles games 6 & 8 against the likes of Douglas and Goixerri who have been dominating the late singles with a combined 11 wins in the 18 feature singles games so far.  Manu, the undisputed best back-court player from the Dania fronton, was signed-on to the Magic City Jai-Alai roster after the close of Dania Jai-Alai in 2021.

Ladutxe left the Dania fronton on its closing day in true champion-style by winning the last four games of the Dania meet finale and overall winning five of his seven appearances plus a second place finish in another game on November 28^th 2021.  That was perhaps the best finish for Ladutxe in his Dania career for one performance.  His most wins in a Dania performance in the previous two years was when he won four games of his five appearances for the October 12 Saturday matinee program in 2019.

Trifecta pools continue to grow for 2022 at Magic City Jai-Alai with Sunday being the largest average daily trifecta pool yet for the year since opening on February 14.  Trifecta prices continue to pay great with an average $1.00 trifecta price of $274 for Sunday’s eight pelota games.  The popular Jai-5 Jackpot wager also swelled above the $2,000 guaranteed minimum for the first time this year to $2,713 on Sunday as there again was no single winning ticket with all five winners correct.  Monday’s Jackpot wager could easily exceed $4,000 to one lucky winner.

Magic City’s schedule is eight pelota games starting at 1:30-pm EST for Sunday through Tuesday and five Battle Court / H2H matches at 5-pm the same days.  The fronton area is open for live viewing for pelota games and Battle Court / H2H on Sundays.

Steve M.

Magic City H2H Jai-Alai matches have a $1,500 max prize up for grabs each week for the games at 5-pm on Sunday through Tuesday.  Contestants correctly selecting the winners of 15 of 15 H2H matches for the week will split the $1,500 grand prize.  If only one contestant has all 15 correct they win the entire prize.  This prize pool is $1,000 higher than what was offered last year.

Should no contestant have all 15 winners correct, the contestants with the most winners correct split $100.  No matter how many winners are tied with the most winners correctly selected, the minimum prize for contest winners will be $25 per contestant.

The first contest for the 2022 season ran from 2/20 through 2/22 and there were two winners who had 14 of 15 winners correct.  El Corazan and Reverse Two Wall are the contestants who picked 14 winners and won $50 each for their handicapping skills.  Five matches are played each day Sunday through Tuesday with three of them singles matches and the other two doubles matches.  All you have to do is pick who wins each match.

Check under “Other Links” on the menu bar on SayHiLi.com or click here Rules & Info for details on this FREE contest.  It’s an on-line contest and anyone over 18 can enter.

Remember it’s FREE and FUN to compete with other Magic City Jai-Alai fans for these prizes!  Don’t miss out on this great promo!

Steve M.

Douglas won his 34^th Golden Cesta Award of his career by winning the most singles games for the first 5-performances at Magic City Jai-Alai in 2022.  Those wins came in the pelota games, formerly referred to as the pari-mutuel wagering games.  Douglas had won this award the final week of 2021 action by winning 50% of his singles games then and picked up where he left off by winning 50% of his ten singles games to start the 2022 meet, and this feat was accomplished against even tougher competition from some Dania players that joined the Magic City roster.  Douglas has more than double the amount of Golden Cesta Awards than any other player.  RonRon has second most awards with 16.

Ikeda got off to a great start by winning four of his 10-singles pelota games for 40% wins and an amazing 80% ITM (in the money).  Three other players were tied with 3-wins each; Carballo, Goixerri and Tennessee.  The best ITM for the week was Ikeda with 80% while Douglas and Goixerri were tied for second best ITM with 70% each.  Nine players of the 23-players starting the meet have yet to score their first win.

The first doubles tourney for 2022 has been dominated by the Ikeda-Bradley team who have surged to a huge early lead by winning five of their eight games with two second places (62.5% wins, 87.5% ITM).  The second place team of Anderluck-Benny has two wins while three other teams have one win each.  Six of the eleven starting teams are winless and one team has yet to record an ITM finish.  The 12^th team of Vuelo-RonRon will join this first tourney when RonRon returns soon.

The Magic City pelota game roster is 26-players, however three of them are currently sidelined for medical reasons.  El Barba had a knee procedure during break and should be back soon and RonRon (back issues) should also be returning soon.  Spinner had a serious injury last year and is expected back this summer.

The pelota game betting handle remains well above the 2021 meet at this point.  Trifecta wagers are the most popular by far, as usual for Jai-Alai games, and the trifecta pool average in 2022 is running 53% higher than the last month of the 2021 season and 35% higher than the average trifecta pool for all of 2021.  Average trifecta prices for 2022 are also starting out big with the $1.00 trifecta averaging $280.50 over the first 40-games compared to $221.50 for all of 2021, thus a 27% increase.

Be sure to watch and support the Magic City pelota games every Sunday through Tuesday at 1:30-pm EST.  Sign up to wager with watchandwager.com to place wagers on pelota games or with mywinners.com for CT residents.  Some state restrictions on wagering apply.  Watch and wager live in the Jai-Alai fronton area only for Sunday’s games.  You can also watch and wager on Magic City pelota games at this List of Other Sites shown on SayHiLi.com.

Steve M.

Magic City Pelota games, formerly known as pari-mutuel Jai-Alai wagering games, got off to a phenomenal start for 2022 with the first two performances on Monday & Tuesday, February 14-15.  While the pari-mutuel wager options for the Pelota games have not changed from last year, the 2022 roster has changed and it’s bigger and better!  The Pelota roster grew in size to 26-players with the addition of six former Dania players and this has resulted in more competitive games and larger payoffs.

There were two large trifecta payoffs on Monday’s opener; the tough 4-6-7 trifecta paying $1,188.70 for the $1 ticket and the 7-6-5 trifecta paying $1,656.00 for the $1 ticket.  Overall for the first two days of Pelota games the average $1 trifecta payoff was a whopping $314!  The smallest trifecta for opening day was the common 4-3-2 trifecta combination paying $94.00 for the $1 ticket. Wagering pools were also much larger than they were when the 2021 season ended.  The trifecta pools for the first two days of 2022 were 50% higher than the November 2021 average trifecta pools.  One of the exacta pools was even larger than $500. These are all good signs showing that pari-mutuel wagering on the Magic City Pelota product is on the rise.

So far after the first two days of play, singles games win leaders are Carballo and Ikeda, both with 50% wins by each winning two of their four appearances in games 3 and 4.  Games 3 and 4 are referred to as the mid-games singles players.  The early game singles (ga 1,2) along with the late games singles (ga 6,8) have resulted in 8-different players winning these games for the first two days. The popular Golden Cesta Award for most singles wins each week will be extended 3-more playing days until Feb. 22, per Andrew Blechman, as the 2022 inaugural week was not a full week of games. The first Golden Cesta Award of 2022 should be quite a “Pelota” Battle!

Vuelo, an early game player, back for 2022 after taking a break from playing in the later half of 2021, got off to a quick start in early singles games with a win, place and a show in his four appearances, leading the early game players with 75% ITM (in the money).  Vuelo is also a ref in the Battle Court H2H games.  Douglas and Goixerri are the current late game singles ITM leaders with 75% each for their four appearances.

Doubles games (ga 5,7) are even more competitive this year.  There are currently 11-doubles teams until RonRon returns to play and will be teamed with Vuelo for a total of 12-Pelota game teams.  Ikeda-Bradley got off to an early lead in this first singles tournament for 2022 with two wins in their first 3-games.  They had a place in their other game and are the only team with 100% ITM.  The other two teams with one win each are Anderluck-Benny and Jeden-Goixerri.  Five of the eleven teams are currently 0% ITM at this very early stage, however, that will soon change.

Spectators are allowed to watch Pelota games on Sundays only for the 1:30 pm EST performance and fronton doors open for seating at 1:00 pm.  Pelota games are played at Magic City Casino and Jai-Alai at 1:30 pm EST on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday each week with the new and exciting Battle Court H2H matches following at 5:00 pm EST.  Be sure to tune in to YouTube’s The Jai-Alai Channel for Pelota games only and watchjaialai.com, along with other viewing options for the Battle Court H2H games.

Battle Court H2H games now feature the new Squad aspect with includes six singles game players and four doubles teams for each of the four Battle Court H2H Squads with six team members per Squad.  The four Squads are named the Cesta Cyclones, Chula Chargers, Rebote Renegades and Wall Warriors.  Two Squads square-off each Battle Court H2H day with 3-singles games and 2-doubles games.  Check out a previous Battle Court H2H blog post along with Jeff “Laca” Conway’s pelotapress.com for more details.  Fans can check out the current Battle Court H2H Squad point totals on the Magic City Casino website.  Sports wagering on Battle Court H2H games is currently being done through BetRivers.com in 7-states (AZ, CO, IA, IL, NJ, PA, VA).

Be sure to support the Pelota version of Jai-Alai by wagering on this pari-mutuel version of these Jai-Alai games. You can do the pari-mutuel wagers from many states through watchandwager.com and mywinners.com. Check out those sites for more details.

Steve M (aka straymar)

The first qualifier for the inaugural year of the $50,000 World Super Court professional doubles championship tournament was held today at 3-pm at Magic City Casino & Jai-Alai in Miami, Florida with 8-teams participating.  There were a total of 7-matches and the volleys were long and the action was sizzling hot with the matches ending after 3 hours and 40 minutes.  The matches were all played under Magic City’s H2H sports betting format.

The final 2-teams guaranteed a spot in the October 13^th finals at Magic City after today’s qualifier are Goixerri-Aratz and Douglas-Benny.  Goixerri-Aratz won the final match over Douglas-Benny and pocketed $2000 for the team while the 2^nd place prize for Douglas-Benny was $1000.  The final match was a hotly contested match between these teams of brothers, all on the Magic City 2022 roster.  Goixerri-Aratz won the first set 6-5 while Douglas-Benny dominated the second set 6-3.  The final match went back and forth and reached a 5-5 tie where the winner of the next point determined the 1^st place winners, Goixerri-Aratz. All players were amazing and Goixerri played practically flawlessly and the team appeared unstoppable. Goixerri will definitely be a major force to be reckoned with at Magic City Pelota games (aka pari-mutuel games).

The play was incredible by both teams and one needs to watch the matches to grasp the extremely high level of professional play at this event. It’s also hard to comprehend the amazing talent exerted by young Benny who just started his pro career last year at Magic City. The event should be available for follow-up viewing soon on watchjaialai.com.  Personally, this event provided a level of Jai-Alai play I’ve never witnessed before and I’ve watched many thousands of Jai-Alai games in Florida at nine different frontons, including national tournament events at the Palm Beach and Tampa frontons in the early 1980’s.  I’ve never uttered the words “f…ing incredible” more times in my life than what I uttered today watching these matches.

Here’s the scoop on all the scores from today’s incredible event:

Round 1:

Douglas-Benny beat Ikeda-Manny:  0-6, 6-5, 6-1 (Ikeda-Manny won the first 8-points of this match and Douglas-Benny still won the match).  Outstanding match, you need to see this!

Arrieta-Zulaika beat Jeden-Jairo:  4-6, 6-3, 6-0

Inaki-Julen beat Foronda-Amigorena:  6-3, 6-3

Goixerri-Aratz beat Bueno-Kubala:  6-1, 6-0

Round 2 Semi-Finals:

Douglas-Benny beat Arrieta-Zulaika:  6-5, 6-1

Goixerri-Aratz beat Inaki-Julen:  6-4, 6-2

Finals:

Goixerri-Aratz beat Douglas-Benny:  6-5, 3-6, 6-5 (Note:  1-more point won by Douglas-Benny overall 16-15)

The top two teams from today advance to the WSC October 13^th finals at Magic City while the other two teams that won in Round 1 but lost in the Round 2 semi-finals will be eligible to play in the 2^nd Qualifier on April 13^th at Magic City.  The 3^rd Qualifier is on June 8^th at Magic City and the 4^th Qualifier is slated for a date TBD in September overseas.  The World Super Court finals with the top 8-teams are October 13^th at Magic City.   The World Super Court Finals first place team wins $25,000 while the 2^nd place team wins $12,500.  World Super Court can be viewed on all platforms except YouTube’s The Jai-Alai Channel which is reserved for Magic City Pelota (pari-mutuel games).

Steve M.

This exciting tournament can be seen on watchjaialai.com at 3-pm EST per Andrew Blechman of Magic City Jai-Alai. These matches will however be played using the H2H sports betting format.

Check past blog posts on World Super Court for the teams playing in this first qualifier.

Steve M

Entries and programs for Magic City Jai-Alai pari-mutuel wagering games, now referred to as “Pelota” are available on the Magic City website and on links on the SayHiLi website for the Monday & Tuesday 1:30-pm performances next week.

Note that 4-players names have changed for the Battle Court H2H games to their last names, however, their previous Pelota season names will not change for Pelota games.  Anderluck, Cool Fitness, Juice and Tennessee will play under those names for Pelota but will be playing as Correa, Williams, Joseph and Roque for Battle Court H2H.  The BC H2H change for the four players is to accommodate the new sports betting fans with improved player recognition while still maintaining the original names for the Pelota fans who are used to their original playing names since 2018.  Stu perhaps can wordsmith this better but this is what I’ve gleaned from the conversation Thursday afternoon.

As of Thursday, the start date for El Barba in Pelota games has been delayed and he is now expected to be safe for a March 1 start.  The delayed start for El Barba is why Bueno, Bradley, Ben and Anderluck each have been back-filled into spots in Monday and Tuesday’s early Pelota games 1 & 2. Currently the Pelota doubles games feature 11 doubles teams with an additional team of Vuelo-RonRon expected to take the floor by March 1 when RonRon returns from his back injury.  All 11 current Pelota doubles teams will make their debut in games 5 and/or 7 during Monday’s 2022 season opener.  Check the entries for the teams.

Also, be sure to mark your calendars for the World Super Court 1^st qualifier event which features 8-doubles team on Wednesday next week.  The first match will start at 3-pm EST and you can watch this on watchjaialai.com.

Now, here’s some info on Magic City Pelota and Battle Court H2H schedules including a quote from Stu Neiman.  Some fans don’t understand the days and times so here we go.  H2H games are the future of Jai-Alai.  Magic City asked the sports betting partner, BetRivers, what days and times Jai-Alai would have the best chance of succeeding and thus the 5-pm time slot on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday came to be.  Competing against NFL is a huge disadvantage so the Sunday plan changes to Saturday later in the year when NFL starts up again.  Also, some fans are curious as to why the Pelota games are before H2H at 1:30-pm instead of after the 5-pm H2H games.  Here is the direct quote from Stu, “Pelota is a better warm-up for H2H.”

Be sure to tune-in on Monday at 1:30-pm for the kick-off of Pelota games with the new and exciting Battle Court H2H games at 5-pm where the team concept comes into play.  As previously stated, the popular weekly FREE handicapping contest returns on week 2 on February 20^th.  Listen to Andrew during the broadcasts next week for details.

Also, be sure to check Pelotapress.com regularly for more info and blog stories involving Magic City and the world of amateur Jai-Alai.

Thank you Magic City Jai-Alai!!  I’m looking forward to a fantastic year!!

Steve M.

New blog poster, Joel A, going by the name “Jabracadabra” has joined SayHiLi as a new blog poster for info and stories about Pelota and H2H Jai-Alai at Magic City.

Joel is relatively new to the sport of Jai-Alai, having come across Magic City Jai-Alai in early 2021 when searching the web for active sports during Covid times when sporting events were limited.  Joel and his wife traveled to the Magic City Casino & Jai-Alai from out-of-state for a weekend in 2021 where they witnessed a live performance and met players, JR, Stu and Andrew.  Joel even hit all the winners of the H2H 6-Picks contest during his visit to Magic City.

Joel has become a huge fan of Jai-Alai and SayHiLi is proud to have him on board to support the website and the sport of Jai-Alai.

Steve M.

The first of four qualifying events for the World Super Court Finals in October is being held at Magic City Jai-Alai on Wednesday, February 16^th at 3-pm EST.  The four qualifying dates are 2/16, 4/13, 6/8 (these dates at Magic City), and one day in September for an overseas qualifier with a date TBD.  This year is the inaugural year of Magic City’s big money Jai-Alai doubles tournament open to Jai-Alai professionals of all nationalities called “World Super Court.”

Each of the four qualifying events will start with 4-matches of doubles teams, thus 8-doubles teams are involved.  The matches will be played using the H2H format.  All players must have recent professional Jai-Alai experience.  The top two teams from each qualifying day will be entered into the Thursday, October 13^th finals where the eight teams will compete for the World Super Court prize money.  The day before the finals, Oct 12, is slated as a practice day for the finalists.

Here are the 8-teams for the first qualifying event on Wednesday next week and the first round matches that will be played for this event:

• Benny-Douglas vs Ikeda-Manny
• Zulaika-Arrieta vs Jeden-Jairo
• Inaki-Julen vs Foronda-Amigorena
• Goixerri-Aratz vs Bueno-Kubala

According to Stu Neiman, the April 3^rd qualifying round currently has 3-players of the 16 who are officially signed-up at this time; Erik, Robin and RonRon.

The qualifying events can be seen on The Jai-Alai Channel on YouTube.

Steve M.

The new and exciting take on H2H Jai-Alai at Magic City Casino & Jai-Alai, called Battle Court H2H, makes its debut on Monday, February 14^th at 5-pm EST following the first PMW games of 2022 where the Cesta Cyclones take on the Chula Chargers.  Battle Court H2H is essentially a team concept for H2H that involves four Squads of 6-players per Squad that will compete against each other in singles and doubles H2H games.

On a Battle Court H2H day (following PMW games), a Squad will compete against another Squad with five events; 3-singles games and 2-doubles games.  A singles win is worth 1-point and a doubles win is worth 1.5 points.  Points are accumulated for the Battle Court season from Feb 14 through April 10 and the two Squads with the most points will square-off in the Battle Court Championship on April 12.  There is a bonus of $6,000 per player on the winning Squad.

The names of the four Squads are the Cesta Cyclones, Chula Chargers, Rebote Renegades and Wall Warriors.   There is one Captain per team, designated by (C) after the captain’s name.  The squads were able to formulate their own doubles teams.  No player could play on more than two teams and each player had to play on at least one team.  According to Stu Neiman, “The players are excited, it’s fun and the interest has been wonderful.  New synergies, sponsorships, exclusivity agreements and other sources of potential revenue are already opening up.  Which, in essence, means that the fixed odds, sports betting model is already working because it’s about far more than what is bet on each match.  BetRivers has even opened a line on which team will win the whole thing.” 

Scratches will be handled differently for Battle Court H2H.  A lower ranked player can fill in for a scratched player in singles or doubles, however, if a scratch occurs during a match, that match will be forfeited as in the past.  Rankings are 1-6 for singles (S1-S6) and 1-4 for doubles teams (D1-D4) within each Squad.  A singles S1 player competes against other S1 players in other Squads and likewise for the other singles ranks.  It’s different for doubles as D1 & D2 ranked teams can compete against each other and D3 & D4 ranked teams can compete against each other.  Here are the Squads with players, rankings and captain designations:

Cesta Cyclones:  S1 – Manu, S2 – Manny (C), S3 – Carballo, S4 – Ikeda, S5 – Jeden, S6 – Joseph

D1 – Carballo/Manu, D2 – Ikeda/Manny, D3 – Jeden/Manny, D4 – Joseph/Manu

Chula Chargers:  S1 – Douglas, S2 – Jairo, S3 – Benny, S4 – Correa, S5 – CRB, S6 – Roque (C)

D1 – Douglas/Benny, D2 – Jairo/Benny, D3 – CRB/Douglas, D4 – Correa/Roque

Rebote Renegades:  S1 – Goixerri, S2 – Aratz, S3 – Robin, S4 – Kubala, S5 – Ben (C), S6 – Williams

D1 – Goixerri/Aratz, D2 – Goixerri/Kubala, D3 – Robin/Ben, D4 – Williams/Aratz

Wall Warriors:  S1 – Inaki (C), S2 – Nicolas, S3 – Julen, S4 – Bueno, S5 – Bradley, S6 – Diaz

D1 – Inaki/Nicolas, D2 – Inaki/Julen, D3 – Bueno/Nicolas, D4 – Diaz/Bradley

H2H Sports Betting is now expanded into seven states under BetRivers.com and is also approved in Nevada, however there is no partner yet (like BetRivers) to carry it.  The seven states now with Magic City H2H sports betting through BetRivers are Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Steve M.

The 2022 Magic City Jai-Alai pari-mutuel wagering (PMW) season starts on February 14^th with an expanded roster.  Manu (Ladutxe), Inaki (Goitia), Nicolas (Yeche), Goixerri, Aratz and Robin will be playing in the short-court Magic City Jai-Alai PMW games.  Jairo has also been added to the MC roster but won’t be playing PMW games as he will be judging PMW games.  Manny, aka Manuel, the top Calder player, will continue judging PMW games and both he and Jairo will be competing in the Battle Court H2H games this year.

The PMW games have no changes in number of games or bet types offered.  There will be 3-categories of singles games this year; early (games 1,2), middle (games 3,4) and late (games 6,8).  Vuelo is back and will be playing in early games.  RonRon will still be sidelined at the start due to his back, but is expected to start playing in PMW games at the end of this month.  Spinner is still recovering from his injury but could be back in May/June.  Both Vuelo and RonRon will be judging Battle Court H2H games.  Norge Alvarez (played at Calder) will continue judging both PMW and H2H at Magic City.  He’s been judging since 2018.  Doubles games will continue being games 5 and 7.

The scouting report on Magic City Jai-Alai has been 100% great news.  Practices are high-energy and for the first time the Magic City players have picked-up where they left off the previous year.  Nicolas has been standing out and Manu has been adjusting well to the smaller court. Both Stu and Andrew have used the same word in describing the practices at Magic City so far; FANTASTIC!

There are (4) name changes on the roster for previous Magic City players (now using their last name); Juice is now Joseph, Anderluck is now Correa, Tennessee is Roque and Cool Fitness is Williams.  The one and only El Barba is still playing under the name El Barba.  He had knee surgery over the break and is expected to be playing in PMW games next week in the first two singles games.

The highly popular $1 Pick 5 Jackpot wager called the Jai-5 is expected to be more difficult to hit this year with the addition of new players making singles games more competitive.  A bettor can only win the Jai-5 jackpot if they have the only winning ticket correctly selecting all five winners of games 3-7.  The minimum jackpot is $2,000 if you are the only winning ticket.  Likewise, the Mighty Ocho, a $1 Pick 8 Jackpot wager for games 1-8 will also be more difficult to hit.  Last year the first ever Mighty Ocho was won by a lucky bettor and they were paid the minimum $5,000 for that score.  The largest Jai-5 in Magic City history was a whopping $27,348 last April to one lucky winner.

Be sure to watch Magic City PMW games the day after the Super Bowl, one week from Monday!  Battle Court H2H makes its debut at 5-pm following the PMW performance Monday the 14^th.  The popular H2H handicapping contest will continue and start on February 20th. Stay tuned for blog posts on Magic City Battle Court H2H and World Super Court qualifying rounds!

Steve M.

I’m trying to complete a Jai-Alai betting ticket collection and need tickets from the following (5) US Jai-Alai frontons as I don’t have a single ticket from any of these:

Palm Beach, Newport, Orlando, Melbourne (aka Brevard), Kings Court

I have other Jai-Alai memorabilia for barter for your tickets (including programs, postcards, brochures, matchbook covers/matchbooks, bumper stickers, license plates, caps, pens, photos, advertisements and more) or can pay good ole cash if the prices are reasonable. I also have more of the same type of greyhound racing memorabilia along with horse track betting tickets if you wish to barter for those type of memorabilia items.

If you should have any older betting tickets (1936 through 1960’s) from any of the early Jai-Alai frontons, please contact me. I’m only looking for very good to excellent quality tickets where the print is all very clear to read (not a fan of tickets with faded or incomplete print). I’m not interested in admission tickets and not Tote test tickets either; only actual pari-mutuel betting tickets. I’m always on the lookout for more tickets and ones of different tote styles and wager types too. I don’t have any tickets for a Jai-Alai Pick 6 bet and some of those would be nice to own. There are some frontons where I only have several tickets (i.e. Hamilton) and would like to acquire more. I do have a pretty ample supply of Big Bend and Ocala betting tickets. I would like to acquire enough extra Jai-Alai betting tickets to donate a complete set to Jeff “Laca” Conway’s Jai-Alai & Baseball Museum in Seminole FL so they can be enjoyed by visitors. Any help would be much appreciated!

Please contact me through the following website email address if you can help and include your name. I can’t respond immediately, but will be monitoring at least once a day for responses so please bear with me. Please only legitimate responses to this request will be entertained. I will only deal with continental USA and Canada for shipping/receiving items. Here is the contact email: [email protected]

Thanks again! Steve Martin (aka straymar)

Help keep US Jai-Alai alive by supporting Magic City Jai-Alai

Recently I had a pre-holiday phone call with Stu Neiman and received some interesting news.  The Magic City Jai-Alai court has been stained black.  The intent of this is to make the pelota easier to track for H2H Jai-Alai fans, many new to the sport, thus enhancing the H2H viewing experience.  Now this is not “painting” as some might think, staining the indoor concrete floor is completely different. The OB line is still red, just like before.

I asked Stu if there were any new additions to states approved for H2H and was pleasantly surprised with the news that Nevada is now approved.  Nevada should be huge exposure for Magic City short-court Jai-Alai with the numerous sports books throughout the Nevada casinos and with Vegas/Reno still being popular vacation destinations.   This now makes (4) states approved for H2H:  Iowa, Illinois, Arizona and now Nevada.  More states are expected to follow suit for sports betting approval for the exciting H2H games in 2022.

Also, during this off-season for the players and staff, Magic City management has been relentless in its continued push for expanded customer base for the pari-mutuel games.  There is super high interest in the Philippines to carry pari-mutuel wagering and according to Stu the fans are crazy for Jai-Alai there.  It will also be interesting to see how much the Magic City Jai-Alai pari-mutuel wagering pools spike with the closure of the Dania fronton as die-hard Jai-Alai fans will certainly want to watch and wager on some of the Dania players at Magic City.

Seven Dania players will be playing in Magic City Jai-Alai pari-mutuel games, H2H games or a combination of both types of games.  Those players are as follows (by their player names known to fans):  Goixerri, Ladutxe, Jairo, Yeche, Goitia, Aratz and Robin.  Goixerri did not play the final fall meet at Dania as he was recovering from injury but did compete in some overseas partidos.  Ladutxe has been the best back-court player at Dania in recent years.  Jairo had been the highly dominant Dania player in early game singles.  Yeche had some outstanding play in the final meet at Dania (both early and late games) and that was perhaps his best meet ever.  Goitia played towards the end of the final Dania meet as he was recovering from an injury during the 2^nd Annual USNJAC tourney at Magic City.  Goitia plays extremely competitively on the Magic City short-court.

I’m really looking forward to the upcoming Magic City meet with the expanded roster which starts on February 14^th with pari-mutuel performances on Sunday through Tuesday at 1:30-pm and H2H games which follow at 5-pm EST.  It’s been boring and difficult to fill the void with no US  Jai-Alai during this downtime, but I understand the need for players and staff to have some well-deserved time off.  Also, the World Super Court doubles tournament which debuts in 2022 should be a big hit with a display of some amazing talent, big prize money and no restrictions of “US Citizens only” as there is for the USNJAC singles and doubles annual tournaments.

Thanks to Magic City Casino & Jai-Alai for helping to keep the sport of Jai-Alai alive in the USA and a special thanks to Stu for the updates!

Steve Martin (aka straymar)

29-Nov-2021

On December 2nd, 2022 Stu Neiman confirmed the following additions at Magic City. “Manu Ladutxe, Jairo Baroja, Robin Flores, Nicolas Eyheragaray, Inaki Goitiandia, Aratz Mendizabal & Ekaitz Mendizabal will join the roster in 2022. Each will play either parimutuel games, H2H matches or both.”

“Based on the success and enthusiasm surrounding our annual U.S. National jai-Alai Championship we will host the inaugural “World Super Court” Doubles Championship at Magic City in October of 2022.” Details are still being finalized but this event will offer $50,000 in total prize money and will be open to all nationalities.