Meet Robbie Fazzone 

When you spend a lifetime growing up around the racetrack and living, breathing and feeling horse racing every day, you develop an edge and an understanding that few people can ever hope to achieve.

I come from a family of horse players and spent my youth living 30 minutes away from Saratoga – possibly the most famous racetrack in the country, if not the world. In a way, the racetrack picked me instead of me choosing the world of racing. I was just six years old the first time my parents took me to Saratoga Racetrack and I was mesmerized from the very first moment I set foot on those grounds. The sights, the sounds, the smells – it all drew me in and captivated me.

Every time I walked through those gates on a beautiful summer day I was overwhelmed with excitement. Nothing could ever match that feeling then and nothing has ever come close to beating it ever since. Every season, my father had his favorite table on the second floor of the Saratoga clubhouse – this was our home base. Once we were settled in, my father would give us the okay and from that point on, my brother, sisters and I were free to roam and explore the track. As a youngster, certainly the most magical places for me at Saratoga were the paddock and the back of the jockey’s room. I spent every single August day, rain or shine, chasing around after the likes of Angel Cordero Jr. Braulio Baeza, Jorge Velasquez, Jacinto Vasquez, Eddie Maple, Ron Turcotte, Steve Cauthen, Ruben Hernandez, Angel Santiago, Jean Cruguet, Jean-luc Samyn, Jose Amy, George Martens, Roger Velez and the late Mike Venezia (who I still remember as being the nicest of them all) for autographs and goggles.

When I got a little older, my interests shifted a bit. Instead of spending hours trying to score a pair of goggles, I started paying attention to which jockeys rode for which trainers. The actual race itself became a sort of puzzle that I was compelled to solve. I began asking my parents to make an occasional $2.00 bet for me. Now I started to sense that each race seemed to have a different feel – a unique meaning. And for the first time, I began to become more and more interested in what really makes the game go -- the betting.

When the Saratoga season ended and the Belmont meet opened, every morning I would look at the entries in the paper. Then, as soon as school let out, I would hurry home and put on the OTB station to see who won each race. This is when I really knew that racing had me forever. On weekends and days off from school, I would make the walk to the downtown newsroom and buy a racing form. I was just 13 years old and I distinctly remember the old man behind the counter looking at me strangely, as if to say, “What the hell is this kid doing with the form?” Undaunted, I would make my picks at Aqueduct, Belmont or Saratoga (whichever meet was running).

When summer vacation finally rolled around, it was common knowledge among my neighborhood friends that our baseball, basketball or football games would have to be repeatedly interrupted between one and five in the afternoon so that I could go in my house every 30 minutes or so to listen to delayed race calls to see how my horses had fared. Once Saratoga started up in August, my buddies were lucky if they got to see me for a few minutes each morning before we left for the track. I was now preparing carefully for each day’s races. I learned that the more information I had and the more I studied the game, picking winners, especially long shot winners, became almost second nature for me. I soon realized that the thing I loved most, horse racing, was something I was actually pretty good at.

By the time I was finishing high school, the racing downstate became much more accessible to those of us living in Upstate New York because of simulcasting. Now I could spend my days watching live racing nearly every day. The connection to and thrill of New York racing was like never before… it’s all I wanted to do. Soon I became a regular at the various simulcast outlets and, of course, I never missed a day at Saratoga. As a matter of fact, I haven’t missed a day at Saratoga since 1985 –not one, single day!

By now my reputation was growing as an intent and practiced race watcher. I was starting to see and understand all the subtle, yet ultimately costly problems a horse may encounter while running a race. And, most importantly, I was beginning to consistently have the savvy to come up with more live long shots than most of the other players could possibly imagine. For dozens of my friends and acquaintances, knowing which horses I favored on the card was an essential piece of information – a fact that still stands true today. And this is the very reason why, for the first time ever, I am offering to share my selections publicly. My service of giving you live horses at great prices will help give you a truly competitive edge over the other players, the same edge I’ve enjoyed over the past 25 years.

Horse racing is a very tough and often a very humbling game. Now that you know a good deal of my personal history and understand my unbridled passion for racing, you can appreciate that my selections are based on hours and hours of hard work, years and years of intuition and experience and an extensive and proven array of handicapping techniques. Each and every race is a unique and different situation and therefore, I have a long list of angles and procedures that are applied accordingly. By relentlessly tracking the NYRA circuit day-in and day-out for most of my life, my individual intuition achieved through invaluable experience is unparalleled. This is a practice and talent that cannot be taught. I work very hard to come up with the best selections at the best prices and I look forward to working with you and keeping you a satisfied and excited subscriber.