The biggest winners were the bookies – surprise, surprise

In the run up to polling day we reported on a number of really big bets and it is a good reminder of the dangers of gambling to look at what happened to them.

DOWN £36,000 was the £2,000 bet on a Labour majority of more that 84 seats placed on the Tuesday before polling

DOWN £15,000 was the £3,000 a seat on the Liberal Democrats placed on April 11 with nearly four weeks to go.

DOWN £16,000. was the mid-March sell bet at £1,000 a seat on Labour getting less than 350 MPs.

UP £9000 was the £3,000 a seat Tory buy bet at 195 ten days before polling day (assuming no change at South Staffs).

All the bookmakers I have spoken to since the election have been pretty pleased with the result from their point of view. The really big losing bet was on the number of the number of Lib Dem second places that IG had opened at 142 seats. They took a lot of money and had to pay out an enormous amount on the final result of 187 seats.

So if our Lib Dem £3,000 a seat buyer had gone for the second places market instead he/she would have been £135,000 better off.

We hope that Politicalbetting users had a profitable election.

Mike Smithson