There's bad luck, there's really bad luck and then.....

By Martin Warrillow on Jul 23, 09 04:13 PM in

It wasn't quite up there with Tom Watson losing out at the Open (did you know he was 59, by the way?) in terms of having the prize snatched from your lips, but it felt horribly close.
This week, I almost won the biggest prize of my betting career. Regular readers may not be surprised to learn that this doesn't amount to much. I wouldn't have paid off the mortgage on Warrillow Towers, or written the cheque for my wife's 50th birthday dream trip to Kenya, but it would have done nicely.

In fact, it would have almost exactly paid for this week's annual service on our car.
But it didn't and £320 that was nearly mine still sits in Mr William Hill's bank account.
What was I saying recently about the immutable law of Warrillow?
I very rarely take a punt on the Tote Scoop6 bet. The odds of an expert picking the winners of six selected televised races on a Saturday afternoon are astronomical. The odds of me doing so are astronomical multiplied by the number of grains of sand on my favourite beach in Fuerteventura.
Yet when the pool of prize money rises into seven figures, once every few months, I'm tempted. My interest is rarely more than a quick look at Ceefax to confirm that my interest ended after race one and that's where I thought I was last Saturday.
But I didn't get round to throwing the ticket away immediately (I'm like that, it's why Mrs W has just bought me a t-shirt for our 19th wedding anniversary bearing the logo 'Mr Messy.').
In fact, it rested on the sideboard long enough for me to vaguely recall seeing something about a place fund for the Scoop6, such that if you pick a placed horse in all six races, you at least win something, if not millions.....
And having replayed the races on video, it suddenly became worth checking. Third, non-runner (placing the bet on the favourite, which won), third, second, winner, winner (the latter thanks to yet another extraordinary ride from Tony McCoy). A winning ticket.....crikey.
I checked the ticket again, I phoned a friend who checked the ticket, I checked the ticket again. I went to bed, trying hard not to think about what I knew by then to be £320.
The following morning, I was almost beating down the door of Mr Hill's local emporium when it opened at 10am.
The nice lady behind the counter couldn't find my ticket among her pile of winning slips. But, sensing my excitement, she checked the results on her computer and checked the ticket before announcing: "I can't see a problem with this ticket."
So she checked it again - and turned my mood as grey as the rainswept July day outside the shop, which marked the aforementioned anniversary.
"There were only four runners in the 3.05 at Newmarket," she said. "There were four non-runners due to the state of the ground and when there are only four runners in a race, you have to pick the winner. I'm sorry, second place isn't good enough."
Reader, I knew how Tom felt when that putt on the 72nd green at Turnberry slid wide of the hole. I wandered home to break the news to Mrs W who, thankfully, hadn't mentally spent the money yet. I resolved to give the Scoop6 a miss this weekend.
There was one good thing about this sad affair, though - at least I knew what I was going to write about on my blog this week.