100 Million World Cup Bet

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However, to guarantee success in predicting the correct outcome of all the matches, betting at a rate of one bet a second you'd have to have started placing bets more than a billion years before the universe existed, according to an academic from the University of Sheffield.

Dr Fionntan Roukema, a University Teacher in Mathematics at the University of Sheffield, suggests that guessing randomly, you'd need to make more than a million times the number of grains of sand on the planet worth of guesses to take home the cash.

The whole concept is rather simple. Place a bet of at least £1 on any World Cup market. If it wins and is the wager with the biggest odds, BetVictor will award the £1,000,000 jackpot. There is a separate daily prize pool of £5,000 for 25 matchdays during the World Cup. The rules are similar, but only the bets for the particular day count. French midfielder Paul Pogba became the most expensive soccer player on the planet when he moved from Juventus to Manchester United this summer for more than $100 million.

As Dr Roukema explained: “I was a huge football fan during the golden era when Hristo Stoichkov won a golden boot, Ray Houghton lobbed Gianluca Pagliuca, and Gazza performed an outlandish chip over Colin Hendry! But that was the nineties and I hadn't found mathematics. Now I know some mathematics, but I've become 100 per cent ignorant of contemporary football. However, even though I have a complete lack of footballing knowledge, I'd like to explain to you how we can win the £100 million prize by only multiplying some numbers together, using a little imagination, and applying a modest amount of elbow grease.

To guarantee success in predicting the correct outcome of all the matches, betting at a rate of one bet a second you'd have to have started placing bets more than a billion years before the universe existed.'

Dr Fionntan Roukema

University Teacher in Mathematics at the University of Sheffield

“In order to guarantee a win, you need to bet on all possible outcomes. There more than five octillion different possible outcomes in the World Cup, where one octilion is a billion billion, billions - which is a lot of billions. To put the number five billion billion billion in context, this is about the same as the area of 10,000 planet earths put together and measured in millimeters squared!”

Dr Roukema suggests that:

  • Betting at a rate of one bet a second you'd have to have started placing bets more than a billion years before the universe existed to guarantee a win.
  • Instead of going back to before the Big Bang to place bets, an alternative strategy would be to ask your friends to place bets for you. However, even if you take all humans who have ever lived on this planet back to the birth of the universe and persuaded them all to bet once a second until the beginning of the World Cup 2018, you still wouldn't have enough time to guarantee a bet with the correct outcome!
  • Even if you did somehow manage to make all possible bets, and had to record all your bets on individual bits of paper, then you'd have more a billion piles of paper, with each pile stacked up to the surface of the Sun, so some at the top of the pile might burn and you might not be able to claim your prize.
  • Even if you're the greatest master of football knowhow on the planet and you're able to predict the outcome of any football game with 90 per cent success, then your odds aren't much better than 1 in a 1000 when you place a single bet.
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Dr Roukema added: “The mathematics of why there are so many choices boils down to there being a total of 64 games in the World Cup, which is large, and the incredibly fast growth of exponentiation means the number of possible options is outrageous. Almost as outrageous as the 1986 Argentinian handball or England’s record with penalties!”

Dr Fionntan Roukema

MillionTeaching Fellow
School of Mathematics and Statistics

Low dimensional topology, Dehn surgery, knot theory

100 Million World Cup BetF.Roukema@shef.ac.uk
Cup+44 114 222 3872

Last year’s Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner Knicks Go is the early favorite at 5-2 for the $3 million Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park on Saturday, Jan. 23 (NBC, 4:30-6 p.m. ET). He is trained by Eclipse Award for Outstanding Trainer finalist Brad Cox and will be ridden by Joel Rosario, a finalist for the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey.

The 2019 Travers Stakes winner Code of Honor, who was most recently second in the Clark Stakes (G1), is on Knicks Go’s heels at 9-2. Danny Gargan’sTax comes in at 5-1 after finishing 9th in the 2020 Pegasus World Cup. Trainer Dale Romans fields two horses in the dirt race: the 15-1 Coastal Defense and 30-1 longshot Mr Freeze, who finished second in last year’s edition.

Million

Todd Pletcher’s Colonel Liam (7-2) leads the turf field. This will be his first graded stakes race after making his first start less than a year ago. Irad Ortiz Jr., another Eclipse finalist, has the ride.

Neither of last year’s winners (Mucho Gusto on the dirt and Zulu Alpha on the turf) will make a run at a title defense, with Mucho Gusto retired and Zulu Alpha out with an ongoing ankle injury.

100 Million World Cup Better

The Pegasus World Cup runs 1 1/8 miles on the dirt, and the Pegasus World Cup Turf runs 1 3/16 miles on the turf.

Since 2020, the two races run entirely medication free, including Lasix, a commonly used anti-bleeding medication. This year, the winner of the Pegasus World Cup will receive automatic entry into the $20 million Saudi Cup. Both races are for horses aged 4 years and older and are invitation-only.

Related:How to watch 2021 Pegasus World Cup

$3 million Pegasus World Cup post positions and odds:

  1. Sleepy Eyes Todd (8-1),
    Trainer: Miguel Angel Silva
    Jockey: Jose Ortiz
  2. Coastal Defense (15-1)
    Trainer: Dale Romans
    Jockey: Corey Lanerie
  3. Independence Hall (20-1)
    Trainer: Mike McCarthy
    Jockey: Flavien Prat
  4. Knicks Go (5-2)
    Trainer: Brad Cox
    Jockey: Joel Rosario
  5. Jesus’ Team (8-1)
    Trainer: Jose Francisco D’Angelo
    Jockey: Irad Ortiz Jr.
  6. Kiss Today Goodbye (10-1)
    Trainer: Eric Kruljac
    Jockey: Mike Smith
  7. Tax (5-1)
    Trainer: Danny Gargan
    Jockey: Luis Saez
  8. Harpers First Ride (10-1)
    Trainer: Claudio Gonzalez
    Jockey: Angel Cruz
  9. Last Judgment (20-1)
    Trainer: Mike Maker
    Jockey: Paco Lopez
  10. Code of Honor (9-2)
    Trainer: Shug McGaughey
    Jockey: Tyler Gaffalione
  11. Mr Freeze (30-1)
    Trainer: Dale Romans
    Jockey: John Velazquez
  12. Math Wizard (20-1)
    Trainer: Saffie Joseph Jr.
    Jockey: Edgard Zayas

$1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf post positions and odds:

100 Million World Cup Betting

  1. Next Shares (20-1)
    Trainer: Richard Baltas
    Jockey: Drayden Van Dyke
  2. Breaking the Rules (10-1)
    Trainer: Shug McGaughey
    Jockey: John Velazquez
  3. Storm the Court (12-1)
    Trainer: Peter Eurton
    Jockey: Julien Leparoux
  4. North Dakota (10-1)
    Trainer: Shug McGaughey
    Jockey: Jose Ortiz
  5. Colonel Liam (7-2)
    Trainer: Todd Pletcher
    Jockey: Irad Ortiz Jr.
  6. Largent (9-2)
    Trainer: Todd Pletcher
    Jockey: Paco Lopez
  7. Aquaphobia (20-1)
    Trainer: Mike Maker
    Jockey: Joe Bravo
  8. Anothertwistafate (5-1)
    Trainer: Peter Miller
    Jockey: Joel Rosario
  9. Cross Border (15-1)
    Trainer: Mike Maker
    Jockey: Tyler Gaffalione
  10. Pixelate (15-1)
    Trainer: Michael Stidham
    Jockey: Edgard Zayas
  11. Say the Word (6-1)
    Trainer: Philip D’Amato
    Jockey: Flavien Prat
  12. Social Paranoia (8-1)
    Trainer: Todd Pletcher
    Jockey: Luis Saez

100 Million World Cup Betting Odds

Watch the 2021 Pegasus World Cup on Saturday, Jan. 23 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app.