Dave Nichols’s 2025 might best be encapsulated by his success in qualifying for the most recent Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge (BCBC).

After a red hot first half of the year, the 47-year-old actuary/handicapper had already locked up two seats, and since that’s the most that one person can play, he was going to stop right there. However, he decided to play in the extended HorsePlayers Happy Hour BCBC qualifier over the summer and fall only because it benefited Thoroughbred aftercare—a cause near and dear to the hearts of both himself and his wife Jennifer. He wound up winning seat #3 through that competition.

“Once I got that third BCBC entry, I guess I figured I might as well keep going and shoot for a fourth,” he laughed.

Nichols wound up with six.

“This was easily my best year ever,” he admitted.

His victory in the year-long HorseTourneys Tour brought him a $20,000 prize plus a paid entry into all five of the 2026 HT Champions Series tourneys—January’s Flo-Cal Faceoff, the Players Championship in April, June’s New York, New York Challenge, the Spa & Surf Showdown in August and December’s Pick & Pray Classic.

The Wayne, Pa., resident also has a big opportunity staring him in the face of the next couple of months. He is currently second in the 2025 NHC Tour standings. What a “Tour double” that would be!

“The two Tours are definitely different,” Nichols explained. “Friday is sort of an overlap day. There’s always an HT Tour game that day, and I also play the Friday $75 NHC qualifier at HorsePlayers since there are so many points available for a low entry fee. You’ll be rooting for your horses, but if your horse doesn’t win, you immediately start checking to see if others hit the race. Typically, there’s no avoiding someone else having a good one!”

Tour considerations can cause an unusual situation for Nichols when he and a close Tour rival happen to be on the same horse in a race.

“If we’re sharing a horse, I might actually root against that horse,” he said. “I’ve found that winning one of those races can do me more harm than good.”

One player that Nichols didn’t want to be “sharing” a horse with this past year was eventual HT Tour runner up Evan Trommer.

“Towards the end of the year, I was just not playing as well as Evan,” Nichols confessed. “For the last month, I’ve been more rooting against his horses than rooting for my own…which felt weird. Not only is Evan near the top every year, he always seems good at the start of a tournament, so his name is always right there on the leaderboard. It made for a really good sweat in December.”

The first horse racing sweats for Nichols came on hot summer days when his parents would take him to Saratoga Race Course—not far from where he grew up. It was there that 9-year-old Dave discovered Daily Racing Form.

“I was already a bit of a math nerd by then, and here was this paper filled with numbers,” he recalled. “Racing was like a giant math puzzle to me.”

In adulthood, Nichols became an actuary. So, certainly, a player of his skill level with such a deep mathematical background must rely heavily on the numerical side of handicapping. Surely he never tackles a day of racing without a battery of proprietary computer programs.

“Nah,” he chuckled, “I just use DRF and Formulator…though with Formulator it’s mainly just replays for me. I really don’t take advantage of their filters and things like that. One thing I feel I’ve done a lot better this year is figuring out the pace of a race. I’ve always enjoyed just going through a race, watching replays. I normally play Wednesdays through Sundays…I’m the world’s worst Parx handicapper…and people will sometimes tell me “That sounds like a full time job.” But I like to play almost every day. For me, it’s like getting my reps.”

One area Nichols admits to still not being good at is “singling.”

The Pick 5 is my favorite bet, and these days you hear people say on TV, ‘You MUST have a single somewhere!’ I don’t know…is that really true? I’m not sure. I just know that I’m not good at saying, ‘This horse can’t lose.’ If I have two entries in a 12-race tourney, 98 percent of the time, I’ll be playing 24 different horses. The only time I might double up is if there’s a 2-5 shot that doesn’t pass the risk-reward test for me, and I find a 20-1 shot that I think has a good chance to run second. That’s one of the few types of horses that I will double up on.”

That said, Nichols said that a big part of his 2025 improvement, beyond getting better at determining how the pace of a race will unfold, is being more decisive.

“I used to handicap a race and would like four different horses,” he remarked with a self-deprecating tone. “Now I’m more confident in how a race breaks down. I’m a lot better at getting it down to two horses!”

Though still a credentialed actuary, the bulk of Dave’s time is spent managing rental property that he and Jennifer own—and, of course, playing the races. A new gig he recently picked up is being part of the Beyer Speed Figure team. Since last April, he has been the person responsible for making the Finger Lakes Beyers. (So see Dave if your Finger Lakes shipper runs disappointingly at Aqueduct!). Next year, Fairmount Park and Arapahoe Park will be added to his “BSF” duties.

Despite plenty to keep him busy, Dave likes how not having a traditional, 9-to-5 job allows him the freedom to play the game he loves. He’s also exceedingly grateful to Jennifer for putting up with him staring at his laptop all day and grumbling to himself about the latest bad ride he had to suffer through. 

Then again, those who are friendly with Dave—or see him at a contest with Jennifer by his side—have come to know that gratitude and graciousness are not just traits on display in the afterglow of a big win, but, rather, part of his everyday makeup. 

That’s why it’s no surprise to hear what the HT Tour championship—and a highly successful 2025—has truly meant to him.

“So many people reached out to me this year to let me know they were rooting for me,” Dave said. “I try to be good about congratulating people when I hear they won a tournament. That means a lot to me. Money doesn’t really excite me. Some people say, ‘If I win this contest, I’m going to buy this or that.’ I don’t go out and buy myself stuff. But the outpouring of support I felt last year provided such good vibes for me. I’m just very appreciative of that more than anything.”