How lucky punter won £680,000 ... with a £5.35 bet!
A LUCKY Scots gambler has scooped more than £680,000 in a series of bets bookies say have defied all the odds. The unnamed punter is believed to have walked away with a £682,282 win from a William Hill betting shop in Edinburgh on Sunday.
The man amassed the huge pot after gambling on eight horses in a series of accumulators with 107 5p bets costing a total of £5.35.
The winner, whose lucky bet came through on his birthday, has told the bookmaker he wishes to remain anonymous.
He has revealed he intends to share his winnings, believed to be the third biggest accumulator win in the UK, with his family.
One customer at the Edinburgh bookies said: ‘It’s an unbelievable result. He’s probably on a plane by now.’
Another added: ‘I’m told he bets often, but he is very lucky.’
An accumulator carries the winnings from one bet to the next, making big winnings possible. The man’s bet was a series of acccumulators based on the result of eight races.
He rightly predicted the winners of all eight races, scooping the huge winnings.
William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams said: ‘It’s a bet that defies the odds beyond just about anything we’ve ever seen.
‘We believe it’s the biggest accumulator payout in Scotland despite the fact it consists of a series of bets costing just 5p.
‘The final leg of the bet was critical as it completed an eight-fold accumulator and added more than £200,000 to the winning pot.’
He added: ‘We think a number of records have been beaten.
‘It is certainly our biggest ever winner on the horses in Scotland. Also the 5p eightfold bet, which won £203,969.39, is the highest return for that stake in our 80-plus years’ history.
‘It is all the more remarkable this bet came in on his birthday. It was definitely his lucky day.’
The man is thought to be a regular at the bookies, believed to be in the city’s Bernard Street, and watched his final horse in the betting shop.
The final leg of his bet was 14-1 Ascot Day winning at Ffos Las. It is thought the man selected the horses because of their names or the jockeys that ride them.
Scots gamblers are no strangers to big wins at the bookies.
A Celtic fan won £20,000 from a £3 accumulator bet with odds of 6,858/1 in 2017. Lewis Elliot, from Hawick, Roxburghshire, bet on both halves of three matches from Crawley v Carlisle, Hibernian v Aberdeen and Chelsea v Tottenham.
Another punter landed a £5.1million jackpot after staking only £1 on an internet one-armed bandit in 2012. It’s believed to be the largest win of its type in UK gambling history, and the world’s third largest.
An accumulator is a bet that combines four or more selections into a single wager, that gains a return only when all parts win.