Betfair came perilously close to paying out one million pounds

By Chris Wright


FA Cup shocks almost net gambler £1,000,000

<figure> <figcaption> One punter correctly called Middlesbrough beating Manchester City in the FA Cup but they fell short at the final hurdle after Bolton drew with Liverpool. </figcaption> </figure> Most bookies are usually left rubbing their hands together with glee after a weekend chock-full of footballing upsets, though the chaps over at Betfair came perilously close to paying out one million pounds when one of their customers' FA Cup accumulator came within a whisper of paying off.






Staking 10 pounds on a five-fold accumulator, the punter bet on a series of FA Cup shocks, backing Middlesbrough to beat Man City, Leicester to beat Tottenham amd Crystal Palace to beat Southampton.
The five-fold bet in full:
3pm: Manchester City v Middlesbrough Middlesbrough Win 12/1
3pm: Cardiff v Reading Reading Win and Both Teams to Score (BTTS) 4/1
3pm: Spurs v Leicester Leicester Win and BTTS 11/2
3pm: Southampton v Crystal Palace Palace Win and BTTS 11/1
5.30pm: Liverpool v Bolton Bolton Win and BTTS 20/1
By the time Liverpool and Bolton kicked-off at 5.30pm, the guy was sitting on a potential return of £1,000,064 though it was the game at Anfield that was to prove the fly in his potentially incredibly lucrative ointment.
With 70 minutes of the game gone and the clash still resolutely goalless, Betfair offered the punter a take-it-or-leave-it "cash out" option of 15,000 pounds with the company's traders attempting to contact the chap directly in order to talk him through his choices.
<figure> <figcaption> The unlucky punter needed Bolton to beat Liverpool and both teams to score at Anfield but it ended 0-0. </figcaption> </figure> However, the phone number they had on file kept going directly to voicemail. Not to be perturbed, Betfair put the word out on Twitter in attempt to track down their man, but to no avail.
Eventually, the full-time whistle blew at Anfield without either side troubling the back of the net, with the punter's hopes of waking up on Sunday a far richer man going up in smoke with it.
As a token of their gratitude for livening up their Saturday, Betfair have offered the mystery punter four thousand pounds worth of Bonus Bets as well as VIP tickets to the FA Cup Final. That said, as of their last update in the saga, Betfair still can't get hold of the elusive gambler in order to hand him his runner-up prize haul.
We can only imagine he is holed away somewhere currently nursing the mother of all hangovers given the way his Saturday evening panned out.

My parlay calculator shows a 1,064,690 payout, but no matter, it was probably a small heart attack with every kick of the ball until the near miss goal finally blew an artery. Haha I like how Betfair was scrambling till the last second trying to contact this punter to buy their way out. He still gets an "atta boy" 4,000 freeplay and tickets to a game.

kinda incredible, betfair giving free stuff

So when most casinos would have given him nothing, they gave him 400x his bet amount in comps. Sounds like a hell of a deal to me. I wish I could go 4/5 on a parlay and get 400x Bonus Play. AND that's not including the tickets to the FA Cup final. Where do I sign up for that deal? Haha.