Antepost: Rounding Up the Best Betting Markets

by Roy Brindley

This month I’m taking a look at some of my favourite betting coups from over the years.

6,479/1 Novelty Bet Accumulator (1989)

On New Year’s Eve 1989, a 40-year-old night-shift worker from Newport, South Wales walked into his local betting shop and placed an audacious £30 accumulator which banked on a series of happenings before the turn of the millennium.

The punter’s selections, all novelty bets, were: singer Cliff Richard being knighted (4-1), U2 remaining a pop group (3-1), Eastenders still being around as a BBC soap opera (5-1), and both Neighbours (5-1) and Home Away (8-1) remaining on British television screens.

Remarkably, all his prayers were answered and two days into the new millennium he walked back into the shop and asked for his winnings, which amounted to £194,400.

Nobody had passed on the bet to head office but after a couple of days it was confirmed as a bona fide transaction and the punter was duly paid out. His 6,479-1 accumulator is still the largest novelty “killing” in the history of bookmaking.

The 50p Millionaire (2008)

Yorkshire man Fred Craggs became Britain’s first betting shop millionaire by winning £1 million for a 50p stake from his local William Hill shop in February 2008.

Craggs, who lives just outside Thirsk, was celebrating his 60th birthday on the day he discovered that he had landed the biggest ever betting shop accumulator, beating odds of 2,000,000/1. His eight horses ran at various courses, starting with one called Isn’t That Lucky and finishing with A Dream Come True.

Amazingly Craggs had no idea that they had all won until he visited another Hill’s shop, near his home in Bedale, the following day where he was told that the betting slip he thought was worthless had actually made him a millionaire.
William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe said, “This is the most amazing bet ever placed since betting shops were made legal in 1961.”

Man on the Moon (1963)

Of course Sharp, a veteran in the bookmaking industry and famous for offering prices on “who shot JR” two decades ago knows all about amazing bets as it was his company who accepted a £100 bet in 1963 about a man walking on the moon before the end of the decade.

This was the first ever big novelty bet as it was placed at odds of 100/1. However the story does not have a happy ending as the punter, David Threlfall who collected his winnings in July 1969, bought a sports car with some of the proceeds and died in an accident he had in the car.

The Hole-in-One Gang (1991)

In the summer of 1991, Essex boys Paul Simmons (an on-course bookmaker’s clerk) and John Carter (a former betting shop manager) toured the British Isles looking for independent betting shops who would give them odds on a hole-in-one being scored at the British Open, the Benson & Hedges, the_ Volvo PGA_, the U.S. Open, and the European Open.

Their research had shown the probability of a hole-in-one at any of these events was no bigger than even money but they were still able to get odds of up to 100/1 on the occurrence, and managed to place several doubles, trebles, and accumulators (of it happening at all five events) at double-digit prices.

There was a hole-in-one at all five tournaments and when Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez sunk the last of them at the European Open at Walton Heath, Surrey, Simmons and Carter’s winnings totaled more than £500,000 not including the 12 bookmakers that refused to pay them out, declared themselves bankrupt, or did not renew their betting permit.