OT: Bettor goes 12-for-12 on UFC 131 parlay.
From Michael David Smith at MMAFighting.com:
Bettor Hits on All 12 UFC 131 Fights, Makes $51,547
Picking winners in mixed martial arts is never easy. The sport is unpredictable, the fighters at the highest levels are usually fairly evenly matched, and every event has a few surprises.
That's why what one bettor did this weekend is so impressive: He got all 12 fights right at UFC 131, and put his money where his predictions were. The online sports book Bodog.eu confirmed on Monday that a bettor (who has not been publicly identified) put down $200 on a 12-fight parlay, went 12-for-12, and made $51,547.
http://www.mmafighting.com/2011/06/13/bettor-hits-on-all-12-ufc-131-fig…
Very impressive, especially to go 12 for 12 gambling on MMA.
I hit a 6 team NFL parlay for $300 a few years ago in Vegas but nothing like this.
Do any of my MGO brethern have some good gambling win or loss stories?
That's insane. I've tried parlaying just the televised card fights (5) and never quite made it, though I got 4 once (with much less money of course). But wow, parlaying all 12 and putting a not paltry amount up for it is impressive.
I'm not terribly familiar with the card but I imagine at least half those things were coinflips. Well done.
I hit a 10 team nfl parlay using money lines a few years ago, but i only put $5.00 on it. I still won over 1,100. It was a very intense day.
I tried a 12 teamer in mlb that same year, and went 11-12. I would have won over 20k. Needless to say, ive never won or have come close since.
but apparently the judges decisions on one of the fights was so terrible that Dana White gave prize money for winning to the losing fighter, as well. And I also read somewhere that someone lost on their 12 fight parlay by one fight because of the bad decision by the judges.
It would be interesting to know whether this guy always does parlays like this or if this was his first and he hit is big. I'd guess he is a pretty regular gambler if he put $200 on a 12 match parlay, but who knows.
I am not good at 12-team parlay math, but I would have assumed $200 down on a 12-match parlay would have paid closer to $1 million than $50K. Something is fishy with that math..... Must have picked a TON of guys that were -300 to win.
(Just doing the quick math - 2 raised to the power of 12 (50% odds each match) times $200 is $819 thousand... so yeah...)
Agreed. Typically hitting such a large number of picks in a parlay will net you some pretty fat cash (not that $50K isn't), especially since he put down a decent chunk of money. I would be interested to see how that worked as well. Nevertheless, 12-12 is freaking awesome.
you beat me to it, but the answer is that he must have bet all (or most) on the heavy favorites. They can't handicap UFC like a football game (example:" Fedor -5" isn't applicable).
So the bets on the favorites pay out less than the underdogs. The inverse would be to bet all underdogs, in which case the payout would have been in well into the millions.....but its also exponationally more difficult, if not impossible.
My guess is that he took all the favorites.
Yeah my 2 for 1 math was wrong (33% chance instead of 50%). So your $400K looks much more reasonable.
Still.... $50K versus $400K makes this look less amazing. Must've been b-f*cked by the casino or bet on every single favorite.
and chalk it was.
I thought the guy i knows that parleys NHL games was crazy ..... who the hell parleys $200 on a 12 pick MMA event??? We'll find out down the road that it's Dana White's cousin or something.
i hate the ufc,and the crowd it brings to my local bdubs
Going 12 for 12 is awesome by any standards. Normally you would be looking at around 2000:1 for a 12 teamer. That assumes that you are betting the handicapped lines (Michigan -7 for example) instead of the money lines. For example a $200 bet for a 12 team parlay with linew would pay out close to $400,000.
sounds like this guy bet on all the favorites since the payout was low relative to what a 12 teamer
I've hit many 5 and 6 teamers but never even stiffed anything with a windfall like that. During CFB, one of my favorite things is take a four-team money line parlay with big favorites. This way as long as the big favorites win (not neccessarily cover), you are ok........obviously the payouts aren't as attractive but you can still get 3:1 (or close to it) by taking 4 teams that are close to a touchdown favorite.
I am think that maybe the initial bet was wrong or as others have said he simply bet on a lot of -800's and -300's. I do have a dumb betting story, well I have hundreds but I was up $100 from the SB (on the coin flip - love that kid that couldnt flip the coin) and I decided to just bet on the obvious picks - 500 and betters about 2-3 times a week and see how long I could ride the wave, well after a few weeks I turned that $100 into $800 and was watching sportscenter and they were talking about Kansas playing a horrible Iowa State game at Kansas and that Kansas hadnt lost back to back home games to an unranked team in forever and if I remember right Kansas was a top 10 team and well Iowa State was Iowa State. Sure enough I said F it and bet the whole chunk on Kansas, just hoping to make an easy $90 +/- and sure enough they lost. Stupid Kansas.
like a true gambler....you are never satisfied until its all gone :)
That is the big tease about the money-line bets on the heavy favorite....you can alway win 9 of 10 but that one win wipes out everything you've built up.
I try to bet against teams that have horrible offenses and few big play threats to keep potential upsets at a minimum.....but those 5+ turnover games wipe that theory every time.
I also like throwing $10 or $20 on a underdog-moneyline-parlays......they are damn near impossible to win, but the payout makes it like a lottery ticket. I haven't won a big one in a couple seasons....so I am due, right?!
I'm impressed. When I go to Churchill Downs, if I win 3 of 10 races, I consider it a success.
I would assume there are more than 2 horses running in each of those races though. Picking the winners in 10 horse races (assuming only 4 horses per race all with an even chance of winning) would be 1 in 4^10, equivalent to 1 in 2^20. In other words for picking a 10 race parlay under those conditions would be as likely as picking 256 12 fight parlays. And the difference in likelihood goes up exponentially as you add more horses to each race.
With 4 horses per race you would only need to get 6 consecutive races correct to have done the equivalent of what this guy did, and with 8 horses per race you'd only need to get 4 in a row.
When I was 16 my parents went to Vegas and instead of getting a t-shirt or something, I asked my dad to make a bet for me because it was March Madness. Did a two-team parlay and won that, repeated with another two-team parlay and won that too. Turned $7 into $70 in the end (also warned my dad not to bet on Wiscy over Davidson money line or spread, but of course he bet the spread and lost).
win about $24,000 in one night playing blackjack at Casino Windsor. He started out with $400 playing at the $25 table. After winning a couple thousand at that table he decided to venture over to the "Canadian Club" room and play $100 minimum per hand. Over the next 3 hours he turned a couple thousand into $24,000. He wasn't a counter. He just played by the book and drew good cards. And he wasn't afraid to bet big, double down or split. Of course, playing with that much of the house's money, I don't think anyone would be afraid to lay it down.
Boy, I bet he was really happy about the moron judges for the Elkins/Omigawa fight then. There were some weird scorecards elsewhere in the night, but that's the only one that seemed to come out the wrong way.
My buddy (who coincidentally posts here as well) once bet $9k that Andy Roddick would beat some nobody in the U.S. Open. If he won, he'd only make $1k in profit - so basically lose $9k or make $1k - pretty drastic. Roddick dropped the first set and was losing in the second. Watching the rest of that match had to be one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen. Not because of the match itself, but because of my buddy's reactions every time the ball was hit.
I played a 20,000 to 1 15-team half-point card and some other gimmick cards at the Barbary Coast many years ago. I lost the first NFL game that finished (Carolina lost to Philly) and my next 13 pickets came in like Secretariat. I put the Panthers on all of the tickets -- with the total possible winnings of $120,000 or so. I lost the Monday night game, but would have hedged up to $50,000. I had winners everywhere and made a lot of money that day, but ...
The sad part is that I went to Vegas to bet heavy on two games that weekend. I bet on Ohio State over Iowa, and OSU led by 30 points in the 4th quarter -- but Iowa scored 21 meaningless points late to cover. Because I lost Saturday, I bet less on Sunday -- and that cost me a ton. I did win the big NFL bet at least.
That's crazy... I would've thought it was spelled "Better"