admin

Lanfranco ‘Frankie’ Dettori earned a reputation as the punters’ friend when, way back in 1996, he went through the card at the Festival of British Racing at Ascot and cost the bookmaking industry, as a whole, in excess of £40 million. The popular Italian jockey hasn’t achieved anything of quite the same magnitude since but, at Royal Ascot in 2019, had the bookmakers running for cover once again.

Having ridden a double on the Wednesday, Dettori proceeded to ride the first four winners on the Thursday and only narrowly missed out on a five-timer when Turgenev – backed from an early price of 12/1 to 7/2 favourite – was worn down and headed in the final fifty yards of the Britannia Stakes. However, in a move that Ben Keith, owner of Star Sports, later described as ‘utterly pathetic’, Bet365 and Sky Bet subsequently ‘knocked back’ multiple bets on horses ridden by Dettori on the final two days of the Royal Meeting.

Bet365 refused some four-fold and all five-fold accumulators on both Friday and Saturday, while Sky Bet refused any multiple bet that included Dettori’s three longest-priced mounts on Saturday. Matt Bisogno, outgoing chair of the Horseracing Bettors Forum, speculated that bookmakers were treating multiple bets on Dettori as a ‘related contigency’, but Keith was much stronger in his condemnation of the action, suggesting that ‘Joe Coral, William Hill and Cyril Stein must have been turning in their graves when the story came out.’ In any event, Dettori spared the blushes of Bet365 and Sky Bet, by riding just a single winner, Advertise, on Friday and Saturday.

Notwithstanding the significant increase in the number of runners that are sent off at triple-figure prices in recent years, in British horse racing winners at odds of 150/1 are still hardly an everyday occurrence. However, one such ‘shock’ winner, The Meter, a once-raced juvenile trained by Mohamed Moubarak, did pop up in a small fillies’ novice stakes race at Chelmsford on the evening of October 25, 2018.

From a betting perspective, The Meter was all the more remarkable for being the first selection of an anonymous Newcastle punter, who placed a permed accumulator bet, known as a ‘Lucky 63’ – which comprises singles, doubles, trebles, four-folds, five-folds and a six-fold – on six selections at the Essex track. He managed to couple his initial 150/1 with Dollar Value at 14/1 and Full Intention at 12/1 before his fourth selection, Rampant Lion, beat only one home in the mile handicap. Nevertheless, his winning streak resumed with It’s Not Unusual at 8/1 in the next race and rounded off with Victoria Drummond at 14/1, for five winners from six selections.

The five-fold alone paid cumulative odds of 3,975,074/1 and, for a modest total stake of £6.30, the bet, which was placed in a Coral betting shop in Throckley, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, returned a mammoth £544,767.90. Coral spokesman David Stevens, speaking before the unidentified punter had returned to the shop to collect his winnings, hailed the selection of long-priced winners as ‘one of the most spectacular winning bets we have ever seen’.

Bookmakers are always keen to advertise that fact that one of their punters has won a five-figure or six-figure sum for a relatively small stake, because multiple bets – that is, doubles, trebles and accumulators – are excellent money-spinners. By contrast, singles are the least profitable area of business for bookmakers, so they are much less likely to advertise the fact that a punter has won, say, £10,000 with a single at even money. Similarly, it is not without good reason that bookmakers offer double, treble, four times or even five times the odds for a single winner in multiple bets such as the ‘Lucky 15’, ‘Lucky 31’ and ‘Lucky 63’ and bonuses of 10%, 20% and 25% on all-correct versions of the same bets.

However, while multiple bets, by definition, introduce increased risk, every so often a punter manages to string together a series of winners, at working man’s prices, and collects a decent sum of money. The Cheltenham Festival, for example, is considered one of the most difficult meetings of the year at which to find one winner, never mind four on the same day. Nevertheless, on the second day of the 2019 Festival, when results were more ‘punter friendly’ than is often the case, an anonymous Boylesports punter did just that and collected a total of €10,410.69 for his €120 stake.

The unidentified Meath man combined Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle winner City Island, at 8/1, with RSA Chase winner Topofthegame, at 7/2, Fred Winter Juvenile Novices’ Handicap Hurdle winner Band Of Outlaws, at 5/1, and Weatherbys Champion Bumper winner Envoi Allen, at 4/1, in a €4 each-way Lucky 15 at his local betting shop. Boylesports spokesman acknowledged the win, saying that ‘this customer in Meath has brought us right back down to earth with a bang’.

Betting on the outcome of football matches in the pre-match match odds market may be less volatile than ‘in-play’ betting, where odds change during matches, but that doesn’t mean that punters are immune to dramatic swings of fortune, good and bad, once matches are underway. Consider the example of an unidentified Ladbrokes punter who, in February, 2018, staked £0.50 on a 17-fold accumulator on midweek football matches, in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, at a betting shop in Cheetham Hill, Manchester.

Having already experienced the good fortune of important goals in the final ten minutes of four of his selected matches, the punter headed into injury time with 15 winning selections, but Aldershot Town trailing 1-0 to Bromley and Exeter City trailing 1-0 to Crewe Alexandra. However, the often fickle football gods were on his side; lo and behold, in the 92^nd minute at the Recreation Ground, Aldershot midfielder Manny Oyeleke scored to secure a draw for the home side, while at Gresty Road defender Jordan Taylor-Moore and striker Jayden Stockley both found the net, after 92 minutes and 95 minutes, respectively, to secure an unlikely win for the visitors. The remarkable reversal of fortune in stoppage time brought up all 17 selections as predicted and earned the punter £61,000. As American baseball legend Yogi Berra once said, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over’.

The placepot is not an accumulator in the traditional sense, insofar as it is a pool, or pari-mutuel, bet offered by the Tote, still largely owned by Betfred, for which the dividend is determined not by the starting prices of the horses concerned, but the number of winning tickets. Quite simply, the placepot requires players to select a placed horse in each of six consecutive races, usually the first six, at a single meeting and, like a traditional accumulator, offers the prospect of a large return for a relatively small outlay.

The Cheltenham Festival, held annually in March, features racing that is more competitive than any other meeting of the year, but that did not stop one anonymous punter from winning £182,567.80 for a single £2 bet on the opening day in 2019. The once-a-year punter, enjoying his annual pilgrimage to Prestbury Park, placed his placepot bet, as he has apparently been doing ‘for years’, and made a flying start to the afternoon.

Of course, by definition, the placepot is not just about backing winners, but victories for Klassical Dream, Duc Des Genievres, Beware The Bear in the first three races – in which no favourite was placed – did his prospects no harm. Second-place finishes for Melon and Stormy Ireland in the Champion Hurdle and OLBG Mares’ Hurdle, respectively, kept the dream of a mammoth payout alive and, in the 20-runner Close Brothers Novices’ Handicap Chase, it was left to 5/1 favourite A Plus Tard to make the first four places. Henry De Bromhead’s charge not only did that, but scampered away to win by 16 lengths and the dream had become reality!