Lucky Lewis lands £20,000 football windfall with £3 bet

Lewis Elliot has Premier League superstar Eden Hazard to thank after costing the bookies a whopping £20,577.

The 19-year-old, an apprentice joiner at the college, couldn’t believe his luck when a series of footballing predictions landed him a not-so-small fortune at the weekend.

The Celtic-supporting teenager put his £3 on his chosen teams scoring in both halves of three matches – Crawley v Carlisle, Hibernian v Aberdeen and, finally, Chelsea v Tottenham in their FA Cup semi-final at Wembley Stadium.

Each individual bet had odds of 18-1 but that went up to 6,851-1 for the treble, netting the bumper pay-off for the student.

The Hoops-mad punter revealed he “went crazy” when Chelsea’s Belgium international Eden Hazard scored the goal that secured his bumper pay-off.

“It was amazing. I was watching the game and just went crazy when Hazard scored. I am absolutely delighted,” he said.

But Lewis put his celebrations on hold until after Celtic’s 2-0 victory over arch rivals Rangers in their Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden Park on Sunday.

And he put his future career first when he returned to class at Borders College this week.

Lewis posted a screenshot of his miracle bet on his Twitter account, and that tweet has since gone viral and been retweeted thousands of time.

Hordes of people on social media also rushed to congratulate him on his success, with one describing it as the “bet of the year”.

A spokesman for Sky Bet said: “He had a fair slice of luck, which, of course, you need with these type of bets, with firstly the 86th minute own goal for Aberdeen which got him started and then a 93rd minute equaliser for Crawley for the second leg, and, to be honest, he cruised through the Chelsea game. Fantastic stuff.”

The first two legs of his bet came in as Aberdeen reached the Scottish Cup Final with a 3-2 win over Hibs.

Crawley and Carlisle later shared the spoils in a 3-3 draw in League Two.

Lewis’s win was confirmed at Wembley on Saturday evening, with Chelsea’s Willian and Spurs’ Harry Kane scoring in the first half of the two London sides’ cup clash.

Deli Alli scored just after the break to leave Lewis requiring just one more Chelsea goal to land his bumper bet.

That came courtesy of Hazard, 26, striking in the 75th minute to give Antonio Conte’s Blues the lead and send them to the FA Cup final.

Lewis’s success enables him to join a small number of punters who have won unlikely fortunes and taken the bookies to the cleaners.

Back in 2013, a canny gambler landed a massive £210,000 by placing only 1p wagers. He struck gold on a series of accumulator horse raising bets.

Another surprise windfall came in the 2010 African Cup of Nations while Mali were 4-0 down to Angola. One optimist thought Mali could come back with 79 minutes on the clock and put £5 on at 1,000-1. Mali then scored twice before 90 minutes and put another two away in injury time.

At Royal Ascot in 1996, Frankie Dettori was on 25,095-1 to win all seven of the races. He pulled it off, and a lucky punter who’d put £59 on it happening walked off with £550,000.

Accumulators are becoming increasingly popular with gamblers, and perhaps the biggest accumulator winner was Fred Craggs, of Thirsk in North Yorkshire. In 2008, he put a 50p bet on an eight-horse accumulator at Sandown, Wolverhampton and Dubai. All of his nags romped home at odds of 2,000,000 to-1.