Most live sports were suspended during the pandemic; subsequently, online gamblers started turning to different contests like Russian table tennis and Korean baseball while betting on everything from video games and reality television shows to political news and even the weather. Most people buy a lottery ticket now and then enter the pools at the office. However, some people bet on anything, even against the worst odds, and do it in the strangest ways. Here are some crazy bets people have made and the stories behind them.
Kim Jong-Un
Another hot betting subject for the gambling crowd is betting on anything concerning Kim Jong-Un, including when he will cease power, and 2031 or later has the highest odds! How he will quit power and death leads the pack whether he’ll challenge Trump to a round of golf, and other nonsense!
End of the World
Are you part of a doomsday cult with insider knowledge about the end of the world? Then you’re in luck as you can place bets with odds that the world will end before the end of 2025! If you place a CA$100 bet on the planet ceasing to exist before 2025, you can win bog, although it isn’t clear how you will claim your winnings if the world ends.
UFOs & Aliens
The age-old question of whether we are entirely alone in the universe has bothered peoples for centuries. Now bookmakers are earning a profit from that! Some bookies are offering odds on when humanity will discover an alien life form. The betting options stretch from next year to 2025 and beyond. While the possibility of extra-terrestrials existing may be ridiculous to some, it is big business for bookmakers.
Things stay the same
A publicity-shy Welshman placed a CA$50 bet in 1989 that five things wouldn’t change by 2000. They included the British TV shows Home and Away and Neighbours. EastEnders would still all be on the air, and singer Cliff Richard would receive a knighthood. Finally, the Irish rock band U2 would always be together performing live. The odds of all that happening, according to a bookmaker, is a whopping 6,479-1. After an 11 year wait to see the unlikely bet’s outcome, he was proven right, walking away with CA$320,000 in winnings from an unlucky bookmaker.
8 to Win
Another bet saw an unnamed person in the UK place a £100 bet on the combined results (accumulator bet) of eight football games. When he put his eagerness in 20 minutes before the end of the games, the teams were all losing. However, each team overcame the deficit and won. The unknown man walked away with CA$820,000 after successfully beating the odds of 6,500-1!
Betting Everything
Ashley Revell went down in history as the person who bet everything he owned on the spin of a roulette wheel. Revell is an Englishman who sold everything he owned in 2004, including all his clothes. He was being filmed for the reality TV show Double or Nothing. He took the money he raised, CA$135,300, and went to the Plaza Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He placed the whole sum with one bet on the roulette wheel. He incredibly won, doubling his fortune to CA$270,600. He later used the money to set up an online poker advisory company.
Swimming
Matthew Webb is internationally famous as the first to swim across the English Channel way back in 1875. He accomplished that feat in 21 hours and 40 minutes. Webb became a professional swimmer and wrote a successful book called The Art of Swimming. He took a bet of $2,000 in 1883 to swim through the notoriously dangerous Whirlpool Rapids near Niagara Falls, on the border of the USA and Canada. No one had managed to swim through the swirling water safely before. However, Webb sadly lost his bet and his life by drowning in his brave attempt. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Niagara Falls, New York, and in 1909, his family erected a memorial to him in England, with the inscription: “Nothing great is easy.”
Lucky Beginner
Patricia Demauro was at the Atlantic City Borgata Hotel Casino in 2009 with her boyfriend, John Capra. She started playing penny slots but soon got bored. She went in search of Capra, who she found playing in the poker room. He was, unfortunately, losing quite a bit and decided to have a break to show Demauro how to play the game of craps. She had never played it before but decided it was time to try her luck. She proceeded to wager 154 times in a row against rolling seven successfully. Seven is the most common number that comes up when throwing a pair of dice. Each of the 154 non-seven rolls of the dice meant she was winning big time. According to Stanford University, the odds of Demauro’s lucky streak are about one in 56 trillion! She finally rolled a seven after nearly four and a half hours, which ended her winning streak. However, she walked away from the table with a sum that may have been as high as seven figures. The casino treated her to a champagne toast, a meal and a free room.