A hung parliament & one punter loses £168,000

An IG punter will be looking at Thursday night’s counts with even greater interest after making what is the biggest reported wager of the campaign so far. He has bought Labour on the overall majority spread market at £2000 a seat above 84 seats.

This means that if Labour fail to secure a Commons majority the punter will lose a staggering £168,000 rising at the rate of £4,000 a seat for every MP short of 323 that the party gets. Of course if Labour retains a majority of around 160 then this man will win over £150,000.

William Hill, meanwhile, have laid a bet from a woman punter of £72,000 at just 1/40 that Tony Blair’s party has most seats on Friday. Her winnings will be less than £2,000. The bookmaker also reported that an Aberdeen man who staked £2000 on the Conservatives being the largest single party after the Election at odds of 14/1 with William Hill at the weekend, has returned to a different betting shop in the same city to place another, identical bet.

‘We are assuming that this is the same man – the description tallies in each instance of a man in his fifties, paying by cash’ said a Hills spokesman. The punter now stands to collect £60,000 if his bets are successful. Let us hope that he does not lose his betting slips.

The individual constituency markets are starting to get interesting as senior party activists attend the opening of the postal votes. Although in most places the ballot papers are verified faced down they will start to get a sense of how it is going becasue they will know how many of their party supporters who have signed up for postal votes have actually used them.

Click for BinaryBet to see the range of interesting markets that our competition sponsor is operating.

Click Betfair for the main General Election market and links to others that the leading betting exchange is operating.

Click Sporting Index for their political spread markets.

Click IG Index for the full range of markets.

Click Spreadfair for the bookmaker that combines spread-betting with a betting exchange.

Click here for the full betting round-up.

Click here for betting on marginal seats.

Mike Smithson