What You Could Have Won On the Ultimate 2016 Accumulator

Though we are meant to be living in austere times, there comes a certain dignity in being able to throw your money away at things which ultimately don't matter. Betting is one of those things. But betting can matter, providing you bet on the right thing. And if you bet on several of the right things then you could be well in the money.

I'm not talking about some sports dickhead doing some sports shit, though. You can win big-ish with those bets – a couple of hundred, maybe a grand if you really pull it off – but I'm thinking as big as you can go. What if you put an accumulator bet on all the mad shit that happened last year (excluding deaths, because apparently you can't bet on those). What would you win? What are the odds?

I called up a large betting agency and asked them to assist me in realising my dream of the ultimate bet. I told them all the events I wanted to place bets on in my theoretical accumulator and they came back to me with the highest odds they had for each throughout last year. They are as follows:

Corbyn to become Labour leader: 200/1
Trump to become US President: 150/1
Britain to vote to leave the EU: 6/1
Theresa May to become Prime Minister: 8/1
Leicester to win the Premier League: 5000/1

So had you placed a £1 accumulator bet on all of those things – a bet of a quid, a single ducat – you would now be £9,562,477,113 richer. So quite rich, really. In fact, you would be the 153rd richest person on earth.

And what would all of that lovely new money afford you? Well:

You could buy yourself a nice yacht. In fact, you could buy Roman Abramovich's gigantic, 500-foot Eclipse yacht seven times over. You could only buy the most expensive yacht ever made three times over, though, unfortunately. Fun fact about the most expensive yacht ever made: the History Supreme yacht is a mere 100-feet long, but is made primarily of gold and platinum, includes a bottle containing a £45 million diamond and has walls which contain shavings of T-Rex bone.

That may all sound ridiculous, but it's not like you earned that money, is it? So you might as well just spend it on a boat made very partially out of dinosaurs.

The perils of living in a major city will no longer apply to you. No more flat sharing with a bunch of stinky freaks who leave their pubes on every surface and flick their toenails into the butter. No: you can now afford to purchase every one of the most expensive properties in London, Tokyo, New York and Paris. Paris has the world's most expensive home, the £200 million Chateau Louis XIV, which has a fucking nightclub inside it. Or you could sack that off and cop Spectabilis Island in the Bahamas for £40 million instead. This is pittance to you now. The money is meaningless. You're worth more than McCartney, Kanye, Taylor; all the old rock guys like Robert Plant and Mick Jagger; all the Kardashians. Your wealth now extends beyond petty celebrity.

Sadly you cannot afford to get too big for your boots. If you were sick of your time on earth and wanted to relocate to space you would have to fork out more than your paltry £9.5 billion. The International Space Station, which isn't as swanky as a Tokyo apartment and is a place where you need to have the shit sucked out of your anus lest it float in front of your face, cost $150 billion to make, which is way more than you have. You could catch a ride onboard a space shuttle for $450 million, but then what? You'll just be up there like "great". I wouldn't bother with space if I had £9.5 billion; it seems like a waste of time and money.

Maybe animals are more your thing? Maybe you want a £70 million pound race / breeding horse, like Fusaichi Pegasus, or the slightly cheaper Shareef Dancer at £40 million? For your money, you could have 225 Shareef Dancers in your horse-arsenal. Or you could have around 7 million expensive Persian cats – whatever floats your boat.

But the thing is you can never have any of these things because you're not a billionaire and, frankly, you never will be. These odds… it will never happen again. But think about it: for a pound you could have had a taste of the high life. Not just a taste. A can of the high life sprayed into your mouth until the day you die. Shame you will never be happy. Enjoy the rest of your year.

@joe_bish

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