By winning $131,250 in last weekend’s Players Championship, Brian Graziano added his name to the very short list of those who have won “majors” at HorseTourneys. He doesn’t see himself quite fitting into that group, however.
“I’m a small guy,” he confessed. “I don’t compete at the same level as those other names. I’m small potatoes.”
Graziano, 44, lives in Manahawkin, N.J., which is about 30 minutes from Atlantic City, and he works in the IT field as a systems engineer. He and his wife Katie will celebrate their 16th anniversary this week, and they have a 12-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son.
“It’s hard with kids to play a lot of contests,” he said. “They occupy a lot of your time, and I don’t have any massive bankroll. When everyone goes to bed and it’s late, I’ll look at stuff and see if anything is worthwhile. I try to play the bigger ones like your five [in the Champions Series], but the smaller ones, no, mainly due to time—and money-wise is the other thing.”
The irony is that Graziano’s infrequent contest appearances (he has yet to play in an NHC or BCBC) turned out to be a contributing factor in his decision to play aggressively at the very end of the Players Championship.
Sitting in third place with one race left—$34.30 behind leader Evan Trommer but just $1.70 shy of Lucas Van Zandt in second place—Graziano had to ponder the option of going with the favorite, #3 Hurricane Way, who went off at 4-5 in Sunday’s 12th at Santa Anita. Third place was worth $25,200, but second place paid twice as much—$50,400. That’s when Graziano asked himself an important question:
“Are you ever going to have this opportunity again to get there in a contest like this?”
There was one other thing.
“I really didn’t like the 3 horse at all,” he laughed. “That made my decision a little easier.”
So Graziano decided to roll the dice and go with a horse that he did like, #7 Big Juanito. Again, though, there was one other thing.
As post time neared, Big Juanito was sitting at 11-1. Then he started getting knocked down to 9-1 and then 8-1. Graziano got a little nervous. In two days of play, he hadn’t once gotten off his original pick, but now he feared that Big Juanito wouldn’t pay enough to push him past Trommer. With just one minute to post now, Graziano turned his attention to a couple of alternatives—the #1 horse, Khantaro d’Oro and the 6 horse, Kawazaki. Both horses seemed to have sufficiently high odds. With time running out, he decided he liked the 6 just a little bit more than the 1, and he made the switch. As the horses loaded into the gate, the final display of the odds that Graziano saw showed that Kawazaki was 12-1. At least for the moment, he figured he was alive.
Was he ever!
Time for a little more irony. In between the last showing of the pre-race odds on TV and the display of the actual final odds, the price on Big Juanita had actually drifted slightly higher (11.50-1) than that of Kawazaki, who closed at 11.30-1.
No matter how he arrived at his final-race decision, though, Brian Graziano was the winner of the Players Championship and its $126,000 top prize.
“It was just electrifying to win one of these…it was intense,” he said enthusiastically before pausing for a moment as if to catch himself. “Of course, being lucky at the end helped too.”
In addition to the $126,000 for being the overall champ, Graziano collected an additional $5,250 for having the second highest score on Saturday. Two of his big hits that day came in back-to-back races with Landmark Friday ($41.40, $16.40) in the 10th at Gulfstream and first-time starter Tight Squeeze ($13.00, $6.40) in the 7th at Santa Anita.
When doing his handicapping, Graziano leans on a variety of things including Thorograph numbers, race replays and DRF Clocker Reports. He likes to refer to those workout reports as “Clockers”…the same way you or I might refer to a horse’s “Beyers”.
“The Clockers had Landmark Friday on the muscle,” Graziano explained. “And I loved the Clockers on Tight Squeeze.”
Even before he started handicapping, Graziano has always enjoyed horses. His late father owned Standardbreds that would compete at the Meadowlands and Freehold, and a teenaged Brian could often be seen tagging along with his dad at the track. Later, Brian learned the wagering side of things. Nevertheless, It is interesting to note that, these days, he seldom bets through the parimutuel windows.
“I like the competitiveness of contests,” he said. “When I was younger, I played sports and loved the competitiveness against others, wanting to beat them. That’s what makes contests for me. I’ll still bet, but it’s rare. Sometimes I don’t want to bet on a horse I like in a contest and jinx him!”
Back in his single days, Graziano did bet more frequently, and he even hit a couple of Pick Sixes…but they can’t compare to his Players Championship haul.
“This is the biggest score of my life,” he said without hesitation. “This was more than two times those Pick Sixes.”
What exactly to do with the fruits of this biggest score is an issue Brian Graziano takes seriously. What he’ll do now is likely quite different than in the days before he had a wife and two kids.
“As a kid, you overextend and do silly things,” Brian chuckled. “As you grow up, you learn from your mistakes. You get older and wiser. Katie and I will discuss it later this week, but she’s going to get all of the funds. Horse racing is my thing…she doesn’t know much about horses. She does family stuff. I’m just extremely grateful for all that she does. We’ll do something nice. We moved into a new house in 2020 and just got our basement done. So possibly we’ll consider a deck or patio.
“Maybe someday I’ll play the BCBC or the NHC, but I’m not near that level now. I’m at a different point in life. For me, family comes first.”
