A lot of these big acca wins seem to be placed with William Hill, and this is another to add to the list.
Placed at the Bedale branch of the famous bookmakers in 2008, this 50p bet created the very first betting shop millionaire – and the guy didn’t even bother checking the results of the races he bet on.
The guy in question is one Fred Craggs, a Yorkshireman and fertiliser salesman who made regular small bets, although this one was a little bit special because not only did it come in and make him rich, but it all happened on his 60th birthday.
Happy retirement Fred.
Information on the exact races and horses he bet on is sketchy, but we do know that they amounted to odds of 2,800,000/1 and included races run at:
- Sandown
- Nad Al Sheba
- Warwick
- Wolverhampton
Rather ironically, the first horse on the bet slip was called ‘Isn’t that Lucky’, and the last was called ‘A Dream Come True’.
Talk about good omens.
He only found out about the win when he went to make another bet that weekend, and asked the staff to check his bet slip from the previous day. After they confirmed the bet was a winner and Fred was a rich man, he promptly told nobody, went to a family meal to celebrate his birthday, and kept his secret to himself.
Typical Yorkshireman
In true Yorkshire style, when talking of his millionaire making bet, Fred pointed out that he could have won the same amount for 10p less than the 50p he put down.
This is because William Hill had introduced a few new rules at the time, including limiting accumulators to 8 legs and putting a £1 million upper payout cap on all bets.
Without this cap, Fred could have won £1.4 million at the odds of 2.8 million to 1, but since the cap was in place that extra £400k stayed in William Hill’s bank account.
Some of his actual words were:
“I lost 10p on this one because I only needed 40p to get the limit up. That was an extravagance. A million isn’t what it used to be – you can’t buy a lot of fertiliser with £10,000,”
Every penny counts, eh Fred?
Of the moment he found out about his win he said:
“I felt a dull sense of excitement about the win. I wasn’t jumping about. It was more, ‘Gosh, I’ve won’. When my secret was out, I stopped answering the phone. I’d dread another win because I wouldn’t want to go through all this again.”
Is that not the most Yorkshire thing you have ever heard?