The craziest betting winnings

A dreamed goal from his own half of the field, an “express” with a coefficient of one and a half million and 200 ordinars per horse.

Xabi Alonso turns dreams into reality

In any book of betting and strategy analysis, it is noted how important it is to listen to your intuition, to develop a scent over the years. However, a resident of Ipswich, Adrian Hayward, believes only in prophetic dreams - in 2005 he dreamed of one of the players of his beloved Liverpool scoring a goal from his half of the field. Without thinking twice, he went to the bookmaker's office and bet 200 pounds on a factor of 125 that this would happen in reality. And very soon, Adrian was made happy by Xabi Alonso, who put the handsome man in the gates of Luton. A year later the Spaniard repeated his feat in a match against Newcastle. Whether Hayward made a bet on this, history is silent.

cut record

In 1996, English racing enthusiast Daren Yates bet £59 at odds of £25,000. He predicted that a jockey named Frankie Dettori would win every single race at Ascot during the season and won £550,000.

However, not this, but two other cases are listed in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1984, another Englishman, Edward Hodson, bet £55 on a horse to win at a crazy odds of £3,956,748, but won only £3,000. This was the ceiling for payouts at the bookmaker's office in those days.

But the unknown lady in 1995 was more fortunate. A woman who first came to the hippodrome and wished to remain anonymous bet 5 pence on the most worthless horse (according to everyone in the world), whose victory was estimated at a coefficient of 3,072,887. Nobody knows what happened, but she ran that evening divinely and brought the lady 153 644 lbs.

perspicacious grandfather

Among the players, bets on the fact that their relatives (children, grandchildren, brothers) after many years will achieve certain success are very popular. They bet that the grandson will become the prime minister of the country or the Nobel Prize winner, and the granddaughter will one day be on the cover of Vogue . The odds are usually in the high 1000s, so as the example of Liverpool midfielder Harry Wilson's grandfather Pete Edwards shows, the game is worth the candle. In 2013, he didn't know what to rejoice more at: his grandson's debut for the Wales national team or the crazy betting win that the event made possible. It turns out that when his grandson was only two years old, Pete made a bet of 50 pounds in William Hill that the offspring would someday play for the national team of his country, and 14 years later he won 125 thousand pounds. By the way, having made his debut for the Dragons at the age of 16 years and 207 days, Harry improved the achievement of the previous record holder Gareth Bale.

A similar bet on the Welsh rugby player Shane Williams was made many years ago by his father Mike. Even before Shane received his first international call-up, the elder Williams bet £50 on his son becoming Wales' top scorer, and he was right. The winnings amounted to 25 thousand pounds.

Considered a champion in Hamilton at age 14

But the world champion in Formula 1 Lewis Hamilton made a complete stranger happy. When Lewis was 14 years old, his ability to manage karting was appreciated by one of the employees who serviced the track. He found out the boy's name and went to a betting shop where he made a £100 bet that Hamilton would become a Formula One champion before he turned 25. After 9 years, an unknown hit the jackpot in the amount of 125 thousand pounds.

premature joy

Most players need adrenaline, so they often make stupid mistakes, akin to the one made in March this year by 19-year-old student Jordan Donnellan from Consett. Jordan, who works part-time as a bartender in the evenings, jumped over his head - of course, because his "express" of 14 events arrived! The kid even threw a huge party to celebrate, but the next day, when he took a roomy case and went to the Ladbrokes branch to collect his 1.2 million pounds, he was disappointed. At the office, Donnellan was taken aback by the fact that he had chosen the wrong card to fill out! As it turned out, Ladbrokes has two types of cards, a simpler Weekend Quickslip (just guess the outcome of the match) and Weekend Result Rush (the same, but with the condition that both teams score). The student chose the second, riskier option with higher odds, and blew it - only one team scored in several matches. "It's like buying a lottery ticket in the UK and discovering that your combination won the Australian lottery," a Ladbrokes spokesman told reporters beaming. Sorry boy.

Suspicious miracle

There are many examples of great comebacks in history, one of which took place in 2010 and helped some people make good money in live mode. As part of the African Cup, the Angola team smashed Mali with a score of 4:0 by the 78th minute, and by that time the coefficient that the Malians would be able to recoup was 1000. One of the PaddyPower clients risked 50 pounds and became rich, because the final score was - 4:4. The match was deemed suspicious, but all those who risked their money.

Paid patriotism

Many of the players on the Greek national team in 2004 still cannot believe that they have become European champions. A fan of the national team experienced double euphoria when he placed a bet of $7,300 on its championship at odds of 50. After the Greeks reached the final, he bet another $14,600 on the same outcome already at a rate of 1 to 10, and as a result won $607,000 .

Belarusian "express"

It is difficult to say what logic the football fan from Belarus was guided by, who bankrupted the bookmakers in 2008 for 105,000 dollars. The guy managed to guess all 14 outcomes of his "express" put on the qualifying matches of the 2010 World Cup and regretted only one thing - that he had invested only half a dollar. The parlay odds were an incredible 209,856 thanks in large part to the prediction of such outcomes as Finland-Germany (3:3) and Denmark-Portugal (3:2).

One and a half million odds

But the coolest "express train" was combined in 2001 by a simple hard worker from Staffordshire, Mick Gibbs. Like the Belarusian, he bet only half a dollar, only on 15 outcomes of football matches. The coefficient "shot" at around 1,666,666, and the last match on the list was the Champions League final between Bayern and Valencia. Fortunately for the Briton, Oliver Kahn was inimitable in the penalty shootout, which brought Gibbs 833 thousand dollars.

Screen adaptation of the novel

In 2010, the whole world was fascinated by the story of the owner of a racehorse named D Four Dave, Douglas Taylor, who won a lot of money using the method described in the Dick and Felix Francis novel Even Money. The book tells how one player hired 30 people so that each of them, 5 minutes before the start of the race, made a bet on the outsider horse in the amount of 200 pounds at a quote of 100 to 1. This was done so that the bookmakers did not have time to significantly lower the odds before the start of the race - if the player had bet the entire amount at once, then the coefficient would have dropped, and with it the amount of possible winnings (in the totalizator, as you know, the bettor can only guess how much he will win and whether he will win at all). The horse became the first in the race and brought the enterprising player 600 thousand pounds.

So did Taylor, who was so confident in his horse D Four Dave that he decided to risk £33,000. The original odds for the knight to win were 14 to 1, and in order to keep the odds from sinking, Douglas hired 200 couriers abroad, each of whom received special instructions and the task of betting 165 pounds on D Four Dave at races in different offices five minutes before their start. Given that so many people were involved in the process, information was leaked, and many couriers had to bet already at a quote of 7 to 1 or even 5 to 1. However, given that the stallion came first to the finish line, Taylor's winnings amounted to 165 thousand pounds.

Ironically, Dick Francis, co-author of Even Money, died on the day of the race. “Father would certainly be proud of Mr. Taylor. I am glad that someone managed to use our work in real life,” said Felix Francis.