Most bettors make wagers they figure have a decent chance of paying off—like choosing Auston Matthews to score while playing against the Ottawa Senators (he’s scored 24 goals in 33 games against them).
But sometimes players will spend a few bucks on a bet most people would think unwinnable. Like calling a dozen straight soccer games in a parlay bet, or picking the winners of eight different horse races. And if they win, they can win big. Like, really big.
Here are five tales of small bets delivering huge rewards that no one—probably not even the bettors themselves—ever thought they’d ever get to cash in.
Man turns 50p into £1 million
Okay, remember that seemingly unwinnable horse race bet we just mentioned (and that you probably thought we made up)? Back in 2008, a UK resident named Fred Craggs celebrated his 60th birthday with a sports wager. He spent 50p (around 85 cents here in Canada) at a local shop on a bet that saw him pick the winners of eight different races.
With 2,000,000-to-1 odds, it was among the longest of longshots. He had a better chance of being struck by lightning that year (less than one in a million) than winning that bet. He didn’t even bother to check his ticket until he was back at the shop the next day. That’s when he found out all eight horses won, and that he had a ticket worth £1 million (about $1.75 million).
The best part? The name of the final horse to win was A Dream Come True.
One rider, seven horses, seven wins
Jockeys will often ride more than one horse during a series of races. And sometimes they win more than one of those races. But one jockey riding seven different horses in a single day and winning every race? The odds against Italian rider Frankie Dettori doing that at Ascot Racecourse one day in 1996 were close to 10,000-to-1.
But, as chance would have it, veteran sports bettor Darren Yates wagered £62 (around $110) that Dettori would do it. The result? A cash payout of over £550,000 (a little less than $1 million)—and recurring headlines about his stroke of good fortune for decades to come.
Woman wins £575,000 on longshot parlay bet by picking her favourite team names
In 2017, a UK woman spent £1 ($1.75) on a soccer parlay bet in which she chose teams based on whether she liked their names. She picked 12 teams, they all won, and she cashed in her ticket for a whopping £575,000 ($1 million).
What makes this tale even more remarkable is that 11 of the 12 winning teams were considered longshots. Any bettors who made their wagers that day based on published odds and deep sports knowledge wouldn’t have had a chance.
If there’s a perfect example of our mantra that anything can happen in sports, this is it! Remember this story the next time someone questions you for rooting for a team just because you like their uniforms.
Las Vegas woman wins $100K on second-ever sports bet
Random parlay bets have scored big on this side of the pond, too. Twenty-six-year-old Las Vegas resident Tayla Polia chose 14 winning teams in one week of NFL games and correctly picked the Over in a 15th game.
Her $5 ticket, purchased online, had 20,000-to-1 odds, meaning she received a $100,005 payout. Though a lifelong sports fan, this was only Polia’s second sports bet. She even admitted afterwards that she was a little fuzzy on how the wager worked and thought she had lost, until she realized that for one of the games, she was betting against the spread rather than just picking a winner.
The smallest of bets nets a mighty big win
If picking 15 NFL winners in a row is tough, how about the winners of 15 soccer games, where matches are often determined by a single goal? That’s just what British roofer Mick Gibbs did in 2001, when he chose the victors of 15 matches on an “accumulator bet” (another term for parlay), with the final game coming down to a 22-minute penalty shootout.
The odds of winning? Oh, just 1,666,666-to-1. Or 0.0000006%. Perhaps the most interesting part of this story, though, is the size of Gibbs’ bet. It was just 30 pence, or around 50 cents. There’s not much else you can buy for that price other than a few pieces of candy. But with such steep odds, his 50-cent bet paid out over half a million pounds, or close to $900,000.
Bet small, and don’t expect to win it all
The key to having fun making longshot bets is to manage your expectations. Never assume you’ll win anything. The longer the odds, the less likely you are to win. It’s especially important to remember this when making a parlay bet. That’s when you bet on the outcome of two or more events at the same time. Parlay payouts can be quite high, but the odds are often low. (PlaySmart provides guides for both the basics of sportsbooks and various bet types you can choose.)
So, think about betting small, especially when you opt to go against the odds. As we’ve seen, even a tiny bet on a real longshot can have a massive payout. Plus, the smaller your bets, the longer your gambling budget will last (get help setting up your budget here).
The moral of these stories is that just as there’s no such thing as a sure winner in sports betting, there’s also no such thing as a sure loser. Anything can happen in competitive sports. The only ones with any control over the outcome of a game or race are the people on the field. That’s what makes sports so exciting to watch.
