Big Events, Big Odds

Sometimes it can feel like selecting a big priced winner is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. It's definitely a harder road compared to picking favourites, if you're looking to have a semi regular stream of winners. It takes a certain mentality to adopt picking outsiders as a strategy, and potentially a lot of patience while you bide your time and hold out for that win big!

To stay motivated it can be useful to think back to some of the huge odds selections that have won and rewarded punters in the process. Of course some selections may fall into a 'who could've seen that coming' category, but in other cases there may have well been signs that these unlikely winners had more about them than was first thought by most.

On a national level, the Grand National held yearly at Aintree must be one of, if not, the biggest UK sporting event and gets most of us watching each and every year. I'm sure most of us have been dragged into an office sweepstake or have a competition between family and friends when the National comes around. With such a large field and 16 fences there are so many variables to consider. and let's face it, often a decent element of luck / chance to the outcome. That's a two way street though and unknowns can work for you just as easily as it can work against.

 

Going back through the years there are of course a number of decent priced Grand National winners, but also one or two huge odds selections. Going back to 2013 we have Auroras Encore, ridden by Ryan Mania, winning at very attractive odds of 66-1. The biggest odds in recent memory belong to Mon Mome in 2009 though. Ridden by Liam Treadwell and trained by Venetia Williams it won (well romped home with a 12 length lead!) at staggering odds of 100-1.

Other top tier racing events, such as the Cheltenham Festival offer opportunities to win big too. Focusing in on the Cheltenham Gold Cup, in 2014 Lord Windermere was triumphant at decent odds of 20-1. We have to go back to 1990 to find a 100-1 winner though (Norton's Coin in an impressive time of 6:30).

 

Of course all of these odds are the official SP. On the exchanges, a 100-1 can commonly be twice those odds or more. It's important to use everything in your favour when you're 'panning for gold' with seriously big odds selections, so that when you do land a big win you get the maximum benefit from it.

Of course beyond horse racing we could get into the mind boggling odds of other major events, such as Leicester City winning the Premier League, but that's for another post, and beside I'm pretty sure even Mystic Meg didn't see that one coming!