Accumulator wins have the potential to be massive. These are the bets that you can place and win huge sums of money for a comparably small outlay. Sure, you see the million-pound wins when you’ve celebrities like Floyd Mayweather placing £1 million on an even money chance, but what about those 10,000/1 bets that someone seems to land every week these days?
Throughout this article we wanted to look through some of the biggest accumulators wins over the last decade or so. What’s great about almost all of these bets are that they were placed with small stakes (usually under £10) and they’ve returned insane sums of money. Some call it luck, and you do need luck to land these, but you’ve also got to have something about you to take them on in the first place.
Here’s a list of some of the biggest acca wins that we could find (in no particular order):
£550,000 Won on Frankie Dettori’s Magnificent Seven
If Frankie Dettori had not been able to become the first person to ride 7 winners in a single day’s race meeting back on September 28th 1996, then he would still have gone on to be one of the legends of the sport. But the fact that he was able to reach this feat at Ascot of all places means that he’s now regarded as one of the best ever.
As ever with these bets, winning 7 races in one meeting was a big ask, but someone somewhere always seems to bet on the unthinkable. That’s exactly what Darren Yates did, placing a simple £20 bet for all 7 of Dettori’s horses to win that day.
The odds? 25,051/1. The odds have been compared to a golfer scoring 18 consecutive birdies in one round or a boxer getting knocked down in each round, before then going on to win the fight. Either way that you look at it, it was an unlikely feat.
Time | Race | Horse | Trainer | Start Price | Position |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2:00 | Cumberland Lodge Stakes | Wall Street II | Saeed bin Suroor | 2/1 | 1st |
2:35 | Diadem Stakes | Diffident | Saeed bin Suroor | 12/1 | 1st |
3:20 | Queen Elizabeth II Stakes | Mark Of Esteem | Saeed bin Suroor | 10/3 | 1st |
3:55 | Tote Festival Handicap | Decorated Hero | John Gosden | 7/1 | 1st |
4:30 | Rosemary Rated Stakes | Fatefully | Saeed bin Suroor | 7/4 | 1st |
5:00 | Blue Seal Conditions Stakes | Lochangel | Andrew Balding | 5/4 | 1st |
5:35 | Gordon Carter Handicap | Fujiyama Crest | Sir Michael Stoute | 2/1 | 1st |
Dettori got punters excited again back on Thursday 20th June 2019 when he won the first four races in a row at Royal Ascot. This time the odds were slightly lower at around 400/1, but still ended up a day where the punters cleaned up, chasing the Magnificent Seven dream once again.
Time | Race | Horse | Trainer | Start Price | Position |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2:30 | Norfolk Stakes | A’Ali | Simon Crisford | 5/1 | 1st |
3:05 | Hampton Court Stakes | Sangarius | Sir Michael Stoute | 13/2 | 1st |
3:40 | Ribblesdale Stakes | Star Catcher | John Gosden | 4/1 | 1st |
4:20 | Ascot Gold Cup | Stradivarius | John Gosden | 1/1 | 1st |
5:00 | Britannia Stakes | Turgenev | John Gosden | 7/2 | 2nd |
5:35 | King George V Stakes | Questionare | John Gosden | 7/2 | 14th |
6542/1 In-Play Accumulator Bet Won for £650,000
In-play betting is tough going. Professional bettors are ones that often use it their advantage, but you have to know what you’re looking for in order to extract the most value. Which ironically, is exactly what one lucky punter from London did.
He was able to place 8 winning in-play bets that romped home his 6542/1 acca, which he had staked £100 on. The best bit about all this? The fact that at the time of placing his bet, all his selections were losing, and he’d backed them all to draw with just 20 minutes of each game left.
As the results started to roll in, the only game that was left was Coventry who were 2-1 to Leyton Orient. A 91st minute equaliser from Jim O’Brien settled the acca and this lucky punter was able to survive what must have been a sickening last couple of minutes to take home the £650,000 acca.
30p Acca at Odds of Over 1.6 Million to 1, Wins £500,000
We’ve heard of some crazy bets that have won previously and there are lots that are on this page, but in terms of madness and also some creativity, we think this one is the craziest.
An acca that lots of people like to place is at the start of any season. They try and predict the winners of a number of leagues either domestically or from around the world. The majority of times they fall on deaf ears, but not this time.
This lucky punter had predicted the winners of all of England top 5 leagues, winner of the rugby union championships, Scotland’s top 3 leagues the cricket county championship winners and the Champions League.
The entire bet had been running throughout the year and as it drew nearer it got down to the final of the Champions League in 2001 where Bayern Munich were playing to win the punter £500,000 from their 30p bet at odds of 1,666,666/1.
The game could not have been more dramatic and after a 1-1 score line in 90 minutes and then after extra time, the game went to penalties. Bayern eventually won 5-4 in the shootout and no doubt sparked the start of some huge celebrations.
The First High Street Millionaire
We couldn’t go any further in our list of amazing accumulator wins before we spoke about the story of Fred Craggs. It was Craggs who decided that he, like he often did, were to place an acca of 8 picks for the days racing.
He was a keen punter and like to bet on the horses at the weekend, stating that he used a mix of instinct and of course, form to help him make his picks. After placing the bet, he had actually forgotten all about it and only remembered the following day.
He asked the clerk to check his bet slip and the clerk confirmed that it was indeed a winner. Craggs was the first million-pound bet winner in any high street betting shop in the UK.
But what is even crazier about this is that it could have been more! At the time, William Hill had a policy where the most amount of horses that you could include in a bet slip was 8 and the most, they would pay out on these bets was £1 million. The bet should have actually given him £1.4 million if it weren’t for the limits in place, a substantial sum more!
£500,000+ From a Series of “Lucky Guesses”
We all need a bit of luck with our bets and you could argue that with accumulator bets you need a little more than most. But most of us will use some sort of strategy or betting intuition to make sure that the picks we include in our bet are the best possible.
The bet includes 12 picks in total and the female winner stated that she basically just started placing these bets because her husband and son would watch football all weekend and she wanted to feel involved.
When picking 12 bets, you need to get creative and she certainly did that! In fact, the biggest price winner on the slip was that of Burnley to beat Southampton at odds of 4/1 and she also had exactly 12 home wins and 12 away wins, highlighting her randomness more than anything.
The £1 bet made her £574,278 richer and her husband commented that he’s been placing similar bets for years and that he’d got nowhere near that sum of money betting.
£1 Scoops Massive £170,000 Jackpot
The small stakes wins are often the sweetest (and random) which is exactly the case here. A 33-year-old bettor from Cambridgeshire stuck it lucky where he managed to land an incredible £170,000 from one of his first ever bets that he’d placed in his life.
The lucky winner had stated that this was in fact his 8th bet that week after he decided to deposit a small sum of money into a betting account to see if he could create some money for his new-born son. Obviously, the sum of £170,000 he thought was never achievable and in fact he had no idea that he had won the bet until logging into his account the very next day and seeing his account balance.
£1.45 Million Tote Jackpot Win for Lucky Horse Racing Punter
The Tote is often regarded as one of the oldest forms of betting in the UK and it’s been an institution to horse racing for almost a century now. In that time the bets that you can place on the Tote have changed, but the Tote Jackpot is still one of the most favoured bets.
Steve Whitely described himself as not much of a horse racing man and had actually won tickets to attend Exeter Racecourse for the day. He decided at the start that he would take on the jackpot, just picking names he liked and horses that he thought might have half a chance.
His £2 bet was placed and after the first three horses had all come in, he started to get a little excited. Two more followed and it was down to the last race of the day. Whitely later admitted that he had picked the horse because of the name of the jockey, Jessica Lodge, which is odd as it’s usually to do with the name of the horse. Nevertheless, the horse, that had not won a single race from its last 26 appearances was able to take the win and bag Whitley a massive £1.45 million as a result.
20-Team Acca Lands Punter £223,000
We’ve seen some big acca wins in terms of prize money, but this one is easily the biggest in terms of the number of teams involved. As a standard practice, most sites would suggest that around 4 or 5 team would be a good place to start for your bet, but not for this Suffolk-based punter!
He included 20 games in total, with many being Premier League games that rolled over to the following weekend. He didn’t stray too far from what he knew for his bet, backing many of the big teams like Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Man United all to win.
As the results rolled in, the bet had made the following weekend and needed just one more win to seal an epic win. Tottenham Hotspur duly obliged and ran out comfortable winners to bring home the biggest (in terms of picks) acca that we have seen as these sorts of odds, returning £223,000 from just a £5 bet.
Coral’s Biggest Ever Payout – £823,000
It’s always nice when you see a bookmaker have to pay out. It’s often an “us” v “them” scenario with punters and the bookies, so when the odds finally shift back in the favour of the player, it should be celebrated.
This is exactly what happened when a punter placed a pretty speculative accumulator bet on 5 horses at a meeting at Punchestown. The bet was for just £19 and as the bets rolled in, the sum of money paid out was £823,000.
You would have thought that the final race would have sparked joyous celebrations, but the punter admitted that he had forgotten that he placed the bet and then when on a night out with friends. It wasn’t until he got back in and checked the results that he knew he had won.
Bet on Leicester to Win the 2015/16 Premier League Bags £200k
The story behind Leicester City winning the Premier League in 2015/16 is one that will go down in folklore. It was one of the biggest upsets in sporting history and a feat that might never be achieved again.
For those that don’t know, prior to the 2015/16 Leicester jihad come just a couple of games away from being relegated from the league. They went on a crazy run to stay up and then sealed their fate some 2 games before the end of the season.
Most people put this down to luck and they were tipped to be relegated the following season. The bookies had set them odds of 5000/1 to win the league that year, basically saying that it would never happen.
Leicester did manage to defy the odds however, and they went on to life the Premier League. The problem was, that those who were on at the start of the season had pretty much all cashed out before the end, given how tight it was and just assumed that they would not really win, even though they were so close.
Very few let the bet ride and the biggest winner turned out to be a punter that got on for £100 at 2000/1 just a couple of games into the season.
The 5000/1 payout was the single biggest payout in sports betting history, anywhere in the world. It’s said to have cost the bookmakers over £20 million in payouts and even though it was a monumentally bad day for the bookies when Leicester eventually won, there’s not too much sympathy for them from our side of the fence!