Betting Coups

[Betfly]

Was listening to radio & heard mention of hole in one betting coup. Had never heard of it but good wee read with other ones

From Times Online

March 21, 2004


The top 10 sporting gambles



ANDREW SIM


1 Botham’s heroics land 500-1 wager
Even at a distance of only 23 years, the “Botham’s Ashes” Headingley Test between Australia and England in 1981 has acquired a sepia-tinted quality. Perhaps “pre-Cronje” is a better way of describing a match in which the wicketkeeper and principal bowler of one team can back the opposing team at odds of 500-1 and then clean up when their own team, needing just 130 runs to win, is bowled out for 111. But that’s what Rodney Marsh and Dennis Lillee did — in a spirit of fun and innocence, of course. Not all of the Aussies were convinced. John Dyson said: “Marsh always liked to have a punt, and he said, ‘It’s 500-1 on a two-horse race, that’s got to be worth a go’. I just said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding’.” It’s not known exactly how much the pair picked up 2 The Yellow Sam coup
Barney Curley is a bald former priest. As a sworn enemy of bookmakers, he understandably finds it difficult to get money on himself. So he adopts cunning plans, such as the day in 1975 that he backed his own horse, Yellow Sam, to win a race at an obscure Irish course, Bellewstown. In the days before mobile phones, he ordered his men to back the horse in bookies across the country. To prevent news filtering back to the course, a friend blocked Bellewstown’s sole phonebox with an apparently urgent call. The horse won at 20-1, landing Curley more than £300,000
3 The hole-in-one gang
In the summer of 1991 Essex boys Paul Simmons and John Carter toured bookie shops nationwide, seeking odds on the chances of a hole-in-one being scored at The Open. Statistically, the odds should have been around even money, but for reasons best known to themselves the bookmakers accommodated them at a thumping 100-1. The gamble was landed when Brian Marchbank, right, aced with his first stroke on day one, hitting the layers for £500,000
4 Shame of the Black Sox
Arnold Rothstein, a New York gambler and fixer, boasted that he could fix anything. Nothing was more seemingly unfixable than the 1919 baseball World Series. With the legendary “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, right, in their team, the Chicago White Sox looked set to beat the Cincinatti Reds. But Rothstein bribed the Sox to throw the match, having backed the Reds to win $300,000. Chicago, later dubbed the Black Sox, lost in an increasingly rank atmosphere, legend having it that one young fan later cried out in despair: “Say it ain’t so, Joe”
5 Big over Japan
Punters still talk fondly about one of the most woeful mispricings in spread-betting history. In the 1995 World Cup, New Zealand had unleashed Jonah Lomu on a terrified rugby world. When they came to play no-hopers Japan, however, Lomu was rested. Sporting Index predicted that the Kiwis would win by 40-45 points. What they hadn’t factored in was that the All Black reserves were desperate to play themselves into the team. Shrewdies predicted a bigger victory and were rewarded when the All Blacks won 145-17. Punters picked up 83 times their stake
6 Bookies’ blood all over the carpet
The nearest the big off- course bookmakers have come in recent years to being cleaned out by a single individual. Dublin carpet baron Noel Furlong backed his own horse, Destriero, to win the opening race of the 1991 Cheltenham Festival. It won, netting him about £2m. But Furlong, right, had doubled up Destriero with The Iliad — a 25-1 shot in the Champion Hurdle. Ladbrokes alone had liabilities of more than £10m. Panic ensued and the bookies rained cash on the no-hoper in a hedging fever, forcing it in to 11-2. It lost, but the day was still a bookies’ bloodbath
7 Futter’s £1m flutter
The ultimate accolade for any punter is surely to be mentioned in those official dispatches of the enemy — the bookmakers’ annual accounts. That’s what happened when Irish bookmaker Paddy Power cited the Grand National win by Monty’s Pass, right, as a significant factor in its fall in profits last year. Mike Futter, the bingo hall proprietor behind the multimillion-pound plunge on his horse, didn’t have a penny on with them. “But some of my friends did. And I told quite a few of them.” Futter won just short of £1m with leading firms at all odds from 66-1 to 20-1
8 Big-price Ben wins Open
Most winning gamblers are familiar with the refrain “Why didn’t I have a bit more on?” This phrase is not in Kevin Foster’s vocabulary. He placed a £1,000 bet on unknown rookie Ben Curtis during the final round of last year’s Open. Curtis had opened the tournament at 250-1, but was still available at 40-1. Curtis birdied the first, and Foster waded in again — and again and again — finally winning £240,000. But was he satisfied? No — he has had a 28-1 treble on Arsenal, Celtic and Hull to win their respective divisions (which they look likely to do) that will net him £1.5m
9 McCoy does the Business
Novice chases at Southwell don’t normally feature on News At Ten. But on January 23, 2002, one did. And thanks to in-running betting, one punter received, proportionately, the biggest payout for a non-multiple bet in living memory. Seven runners started and, one by one, they all fell. Third to go was Tony McCoy’s mount, Family Business, at which point one wag decided to hoover up some “mug” money and offered 1,000-1 about the horse. One punter staked £2. The remaining four horses all fell in comic succession, and McCoy remounted to win
10 Lights out at The Valley
Bribing players to throw matches proved too tricky for the Far Eastern gambling syndicates, so they threw a few light-switches instead. With results standing if the games were abandoned after half-time, a gang with links to the syndicates bribed a groundsman to tamper with the floodlights at a Charlton v Liverpool game at The Valley. The plan was to back Charlton with a two-goal handicap advantage and switch the lights off if they were ahead at half-time. Two games had already been hit by floodlight failures before police caught the gang, who stood to make £30m

[slick]

Cheers for that Betfly, it was a good read.
Theres some canny scams there allthough the guy who bet on Ben curtis needed more luck than anything else, good on him.
I'm also presuming the phrase and song "say it aint so Joe" stemmed from that Black sox game, you learn something new everyday.

[Betfly]

Here's some others I stumbled across

This month I'm taking a look at some of my favourite betting coups from over the years.



6,479/1 Novelty Bet Accumulator (1989)

On New Year's Eve 1989, a 40-year-old night-shift worker from Newport, South Wales walked into his local betting shop and placed an audacious £30 accumulator which banked on a series of happenings before the turn of the millennium.



The punter's selections, all novelty bets, were: Cliff Richard being knighted (4-1), U2 remaining a pop group (3-1), Eastenders still being around as a BBC soap opera (5-1), and both Neighbours (5-1) and Home Away (8-1) remaining on British television screens.



Remarkably all his prayers were answered and two days into the new millennium he walked back into the shop and asked for his winnings, which amounted to £194,400.



Nobody had passed on the bet to head office but after a couple of days it was confirmed as a bona fide transaction and the punter was duly paid out. His 6,479-1 accumulator is still the largest novelty "killing" in the history of bookmaking.



The 50p Millionaire (2008)

Yorkshire man Fred Craggs became Britain's first betting shop millionaire by winning £1million for a 50p stake from his local William Hill shop in February 2008.



Craggs, who lives just outside Thirsk, was celebrating his 60th birthday on the day he discovered that he had landed the biggest ever betting shop accumulator, beating odds of 2,000,000/1. His eight horses ran at various courses, starting with one called Isn't That Lucky and finishing with A Dream Come True.



Amazingly Craggs had no idea that they had all won until he visited another Hill's shop, near his home in Bedale, the following day where he was told that the betting slip he thought was worthless had actually made him a millionaire.



William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe said, "This is the most amazing bet ever placed since betting shops were made legal in 1961."



Man on the Moon (1963)

Of course Sharp, a veteran in the bookmaking industry and famous for offering prices on "who shot JR" two decades ago knows all about amazing bets as it was his company who accepted a £100 bet in 1963 about a man walking on the moon before the end of the decade.



This was the first ever big novelty bet as it was placed at odds of 100/1. However the story does not have a happy ending as the punter, David Threlfall who collected his winnings in July 1969, bought a sports car with some of the proceeds and died in an accident he had in the car.





The Hole-in-One Gang (1991)

In the summer of 1991 Essex boys Paul Simmons (an on-course bookmaker's clerk) and John Carter (a former betting shop manager) toured the British Isles looking for independent betting shops who would give them odds on a hole-in-one being scored at the British Open, the Benson & Hedges, the Volvo PGA, the U.S. Open and the European Open.



Their research had shown the probability of a hole-in-one at any of these events was no bigger than even money but they were still able to get odds of up to 100/1 on the occurrence and managed to place several doubles, trebles and accumulators (of it happening at all five events) placed at double-digit prices.



There was a hole-in-one at all five tournaments and when Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez sunk the last of them at the European Open at Walton Heath, Surrey, Simmons and Carter's winnings totaled more than £500,000 not including the 12 bookmakers that refused to pay them out, declared themselves bankrupt or did not renew their betting permit.