Crazy Bets that made People Filthy Rich
The riskier the bet, the bigger the payout – this applies especially to casino games. Playing progressive slots at the best online casino in 2019 can make you a millionaire… but hitting that jackpot comes with a one-in-a-million (well, actually, one in several million) chance.
Betting on a single number at the roulette table also comes with the biggest potential payout but it also has the lowest chance of being successful. And the odds of guessing all the numbers of the lottery… let’s not go down that road. Sometimes, in turn, bets come with equally astronomical odds. And there are times when these bets pay off big to those who were lucky (or foolish) enough to place them.
The lucky dozen
When it comes to betting on football, most punters rely on data to pick their choices on an accumulator. This was not the case of an anonymous housewife from Leysdown-on-Sea, a coastal village on the east side of the Isle of Sheppey in England. According to clerk Carli Faulkner, the woman walked into a William Hill shop one day in 2017, accompanied by her son, had him read out the games. She chose 12 of them that she liked the sound of and put them on a 12-way accumulator. The bet was seemingly not a very serious one as she only paid $2 on the slip – she was reportedly fed up with her husband and son constantly watching the matches on TV every single weekend. Lady Luck looked at the bored housewife with a wide smile this time: her $2 bet paid out $574,278.41.
All the king’s horses
On his 60th birthday, Yorkshire resident Fred Craggs thought he’d try his luck at the races, placing an eight-leg accumulator on horses whose names he probably liked. And what’s not to like: these speedy animals wore names like “A Dream Come True”, “Isn’t That Lucky”, and others. The horses were all absolute underdogs, it seems, because the bookies offered Mr. Craggs incredibly long odds on his accumulator: 2,000,000 to 1. “Nomen est omen”, the old saying goes – and this was especially true in the case of Mr. Craggs, who walked away with winnings of $1 million at the end of the day.
Audacity pays (out)
Last but not least, let us mention one of the most successful professional gamblers in history, William T. “Billy” Walters. He is famous for his daring bets… and none of them was bigger than his $3.5 million bet on the New Orleans Saints during the 2010 Super Bowl. The Saints were the underdogs of the game but this didn’t stop Walters from betting this massive amount on their success. And the Saints didn’t let him down: they beat the Indianapolis Colts 31 to 17 and made him millions. How many millions, you may ask? Well, this was never revealed…