Wins

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!

On his birthday in February, 2008, Yorkshireman Fred Craggs made history when winning exactly £1,000,000, for a fifty pence stake, from an eight-fold accumulator placed with William Hill. However, just over a decade later, in September, 2018, an anonymous Scottish punter from Leith, Edinburgh, also celebrating his birthday, took the well-known bookmaker to the cleaners again with a similar bet.

The small-stakes punter, believed to be in his fifties, placed a series of permed accumulator bets, each worth just five pence apiece, for a total stake of just £5.35. However, a comfortable three-length win for 14/1 chance Ascot Day in the Grace Harris Racing Handicap at Ffos Las completed an eight-fold accumulator which, in itself, yielded £203,969 for a five pence stake.

Of course, his eighth and final winning selection was critical, but the permed nature of his bet meant that many of the other permutations also returned major sums of money. All told, his total winnings were £682,282.14, believed to be the biggest accumulator payout in Scottish betting history and the third biggest permed accumulator payout in the United Kingdom, as a whole, behind two bets that benefited from the so-called ‘Magnificent Seven’, ridden by Lanfranco ‘Frankie’ Dettori at Ascot 22 years previously.

Rupert Adams, spokesman for William Hill, said, ‘It’s a bet that defies the odds beyond just about anything we’ve ever seen’, adding, ‘We think a number of records have been beaten. It is certainly our biggest ever winner on the horses in Scotland.’

Since the advent of ‘in-play’ or ‘in-running’ betting opportunities, bookmakers have introduced the so-called ‘cash out’ option. According to bookmakers, cash out allows punters in a strong position to profit early – or, in other words, to ‘take their money and run’ – and those in a weak position to salvage some of their initial stake, before the event on which they’ve bet has finished. However, the cash out option benefits the layers insofar as it doubles the bookmakers’ edge, or overround, and balances their books at worse odds than are currently available elsewhere.

The cash out option is commonly associated with accumulators on football matches, with punters keen to avoid the all-too-familiar disappointment of being denied a decent return by the failure of a single selection. However, a football match, like any other sporting event offering ‘live’ betting markets, is subject to volatility in the odds on offer, especially in the closing stages, so cashing out is, at best, a double-edged sword for the punter.

Consider the punter who, in April, 2019, staked £1 on a 15-fold accumulator on football matches in England, Scotland and Spain. All his selections, including six away teams, won and, had he kept his nerve, his bet would have returned £24,641.22. However, the hapless punter pushed the panic button and cashed out early, for £14.32, denying himself £24,626.90 in winnings. Quite why, if he was that keen on winning £14.32, he bothered to place a 15-fold accumulator that took out over £24,000 in the first place is a question that only he can answer. In any event, his exploits serve as a shining example of why bookmakers are so keen to promote the cash out option.

The fifth series of the ITV2 reality show ‘Love Island’ saw its fair share of ups and downs – not to mention thousands of Ofcom complaints about the unacceptable behaviour of the contestants – and the eventual winners, beauty therapist Amber Gill and professional rugby player Greg O’Shea, may have proved a disappointment to some viewers. The result was certainly an upset, with Tommy Fury – younger brother of boxer Tyson Fury – and social media influencer Molly-Mae Hague tipped as winners weeks in advance and odds-on heading into the ‘final’.

One viewer with more reason than most to be disappointed with the defeat of Fury and Hague was an unidentified Sky Bet punter for whom victory for the long-standing couple would have completed the eighth, and final, leg of an accumulator worth £10,760.60. Ironically, having invested time, effort and a significant amount of money – his initial stake was £102 – in seven, legitimate sporting selections, including Enable in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes and Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon Men’s Singles, to name but two, his fate was ultimately determined by the British public voting on a less-than-intellectually-demanding, often mind-numbing, TV reality series.

Of course, it can be argued that the punter was unlucky to come to grief at the ‘final hurdle’, but his exploits serve as a timely reminder that so-called ‘novelty’ bets are intended as quirky, fun, or even comical, distractions and not serious betting opportunities. Reality TV may be harmless enough, but is typically exploitative, crude and designed for shock value, so shock results should come as no real surprise.