€6 EuroMillions bet nets €34,502 win
A lucky Irish punter has beaten odds of 33,000 to one to take home €34,502 (£25,000) from a €6 (£4.50) bet on the EuroMillions lottery result.
The County Louth gambler, who wants to remain anonymous, placed two successful bets with BoyleSports on Tuesday night's draw.
The first, on the numbers 8, 12 and 49, netted him €1,501 after they were drawn in the EuroMillions Plus draw. A second, on 8, 12, 41 and 49, brought him the remaining €33,001.
It's a big hit for bookies BoyleSports.
"May has started with punters taking a belt to BoyleSports in what has been the worst month of the year so far, but it's certainly true to say that small stakes can return big dividends," the bookie's Liam Glynn told the Irish Mirror.
Betting on the lottery numbers might seem a bit odd - why not do the obvious thing and simply enter the lottery by buying a ticket?
One reason is that bookmakers and online betting sites allow bets of less than £2 to be placed, giving punters several chances to win for a small stake - not an option with EuroMillions itself. Gamblers can also, for example, gamble on one number alone or even whether the first one to be drawn will be odd or even.
More importantly, there's the appeal of the odds given by bookmakers for matching two, three, four or five numbers, which are generally far better than those offered by the lottery itself. A £2 EuroMillions ticket might net only around £3 for two correct numbers, while a £2 bet on two numbers could bring in as much as £200.
But things aren't necessarily what they seem. With the EuroMillions ticket, the punter has several chances to win, as any two of his numbers will do. For a successful bet, though, he needs to get both numbers right: there's no margin for error. Covering all six numbers in combinations of three would mean making 20 individual bets.
And the lottery has one big pull that the bookies can't match: if you want to daydream about winning the jackpot, there's no substitute for the real thing.
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