It is, and forever will be, difficult to place winning bets on football matches.
There are shock results in the fixture list every week, goals don’t fly in at the rate expected and normally aggressive teams turn into shrinking violets when backed in the cards market.
Betting on corners can be even more volatile, so even the bookies have a hard time pricing up the corners market – even taking into account the various data points that are available.
Sometimes though, betting on markets steeped in variance can actually help punters… as one Betfair customer found out to some tune at the weekend.
They placed a £4 accumulator on 12 games, betting that each would have 12 or more corners in it.
Odds of just shy of 250,000/1 reflect the probability of the bet landing, but what followed on Saturday afternoon was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable betting coups we will ever see…
Corner King
Remember, the punter – who wished to remain anonymous but is known to be a 45-year-old from Portsmouth – needed 12 or more corners in each of the games on his coupon to land a prize of nearly £1 million.
On a day of heavy rain and high winds across the country, some of his selections breezed home: MK Dons’ 1-0 win at Stevenage and Plymouth’s thrilling 3-2 win at Cambridge both had 16 corners in them.
There was a similarly cosy story in the Championship clash between Preston and West Brom; two goals – the game ended 1-1 – and 15 corners were shared, and that was the exact same set of numbers in the Bromley vs Peterborough contest in League One, too.
Three of our punter’s dozen selections had 14 corners in them, including QPR’s 5-0 demolition of former Championship leaders Swansea City.
Things were a little twitchier in the remaining games on the coupon. Four of the dozen games had 13 corners in them, while the fixture between AFC Wimbledon and Wycombe crept over the line… there was exactly 12 corners in that 1-1 stalemate.
- Oxford Utd v Bradford
- Reading v Barnsley
- Stevenage v MK Dons
- Doncaster v Sheff Wed
- Cambridge Utd v Plymouth
- AFC Wimbledon v Wycombe
- Notts Co v Stockport
- Burton Albion v Leyton Orient
- Bromley v Peterborough
- Preston v West Brom
- QPR v Swansea
- Blackpool v Mansfield
That £4 acca yielded a handy return of £997,385, with the Portsmouth native naturally delighted with his near seven-figure payout.
“I didn’t actually realise it had come in until about half an hour after all the games had finished!” he said.
“I checked my account… I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know how to describe it really. It was emotional, I felt a little bit sick at first making sure it was real, and then obviously the reality kicked in.
“I didn’t sleep much last night, thinking about what we can do with the money. It’s a really good feeling, it’s brilliant!”
The 45-year-old has confirmed that the money will go towards paying off the mortgage, new cars and a family holiday.
Through gritted teeth, Betfair spokesperson Sam Rosbottom commented:
“We are absolutely delighted for this Portsmouth punter and couldn’t be happier to pay out such a large sum of money. It’s an incredible amount to win on a football accumulator.”
Keeping It Fun
After reading stories like this, the temptation might be to go out and start placing wild accas of your own.
But the probability of these shots landing – 250,000/1 in this example – is so minute that caution is advised; keep your stakes at a level you’re comfortable losing at.
Remember too that the bookies have maximum win limits in place. These vary from one bookmaker to the next and even from one sport to the next, with £1 million a general guide for football accas.
The chances of this being something you need to know are infinitesimal, but worth it all the same.
We can’t really find anything to match the Pompey punter’s effort, aside from Fred Craggs’ mind-boggling eight-fold acca on the horses back in 2008 – all his picks won at combined odds of a staggering 2,000,000/1… ensuring the Yorkshireman became an overnight millionaire.