Placing an accumulator is inherently risky, because the chances of it coming off are just so small.
For most people, a few quid is all it takes to create some interest in and add some enjoyment to sporting events that you might not otherwise be all that invested in, but one particular punter in London took this to a whole new level.
It was November 1st 2014, and one punter was getting ready to place £100 worth of bets, all in-play, and all on matches with just 20 minutes left to play.
What’s more, the punter was going to bet against the current score line in every instance.
But they were not going to place a single bog standard acca, no, they placed 8 x £10 7-fold accumulators which would allow any combination of 7 teams to come in as predicted, and 1 x £20 8-fold accumulator which would require Mystic Meg levels of skill for the lot of them.
The bets included the following games, with the predicted winner in bold, and both teams in bold if a draw was predicted:
- Arsenal vs Burnley (13/20)
- Stoke vs West Ham (18/1)
- Cardiff vs Leeds (13/10)
- Blackburn vs Reading (29/20)
- Wigan vs Fulham (7/5)
- Charlton vs Sheffield Wednesday (3/1)
- Bristol City vs Oldham (5/4)
- Leyton Orient vs Coventry (5/2)
All eight selections proved to be correct, despite some very close calls, and the punter won £654,203.90 – which works out as £267,105.76 from the 8 x £10 7-folds, and £387,098.14 from the 1 x £20 8-fold.
A William Hill spokesperson said:
“This is an absolutely astounding sum of money and there were so many late twists and turns on Saturday that our punter must have experienced a gamut of emotions before Jim O’Brien bagged the huge wager with his late strike.”
The odds are not the highest compared to some of the crazy acca wins we have seen, standing at 6,542/1, but a win of over £650k is astonishing.
Last Minute Equaliser
This was one of those accas that really did come down to practically the last kick of the final game too.
At the time the bet was placed, the scores were as follows with the eventual score in brackets:
- Arsenal 0 – 0 Burnley (3-0)
- Stoke 2 – 0 West Ham (2-2)
- Cardiff 0 – 0 Leeds (3-1)
- Blackburn 1 – 1 Reading (3-1)
- Wigan 2 – 2 Fulham (3-3)
- Charlton 0 – 1 Sheff Wed (1-1)
- Bristol City 0 – 0 Oldham (1-0)
- Leyton Orient 0 – 1 Coventry (2-2)
So not a single game was in the punter’s favour when the bet was placed, apart from Wigan vs Fulham; but 2 minutes after the bet was made, Fulham’s Ross McCormack was shown a red card before Shaun Maloney scored putting Wigan ahead with eight minutes left on the clock.
In massively dramatic scenes, however, Wigan’s Leon Barnett was then shown a red card resulting in a penalty for Fulham, which was scored by Bryan Ruiz to level the score 3-3 and keep the bet alive.
Elsewhere, Coventry were trailing 2-1 to Leyton Orient after losing an early lead, and the game looked to be lost, which would have scuppered the bet.
Then, in the dying seconds of the match, Jim O’Brien struck the ball from 20 yards after a poor clearance, sending it bouncing into the back of the net, equalising for the Sky Blues and making the no doubt relieved acca bettor a very wealthy person indeed.