The story of the miserable cheapskate who wouldn’t share a cent of his Melbourne Cup mystery bet windfall

THIS stingy cheapskate wouldn’t share a cent of his huge winnings after someone else bought him a ticket. Right or wrong?

THIS happened. You can’t make this stuff up. Fourteen years on it no longer stings, but it baffles the brain to think people would behave this way.

It’s about a Melbourne Cup mystery Trifecta ticket which this reporter bought for a guy back in 2001. The story goes like this.

I had the day off work on Melbourne Cup Day, so I went to help a family member who was running a Melbourne Cup Day function through her work.

About an hour before the race, I ducked out to place a couple of bets at the TAB. This was the age before you could bet on your phone, so I walked around the room asking if anyone needed me to place a bet for them.

There were a couple of takers, including a well-dressed grey-bearded fellow who gave me six dollars for a mystery box trifecta. That’s where the TAB computer randomly selects three horses and if they run first, second and third (in any order), you win big time.

Long story short, that’s what happened. The New Zealand mare Ethereal won the Cup that year, with northern hemisphere horses Give the Slip and Persian Punch second and third respectively.

Ethereal was about the third favourite but the other two were outsiders, so the trifecta paid a very healthy $6,000 or so.

The bloke I bought the ticket for was ecstatic. He didn’t look like the sort of bloke who needed the money. But hey, who argues with six grand falling out of a tree and into your lap?

Now the way these tickets work is, if you put them into the machine a millisecond earlier or later, the computer picks different random numbers.

So while Greybeard paid the $6 stake, it was my offer to put his bet on, plus the timing of my run to the TAB, that helped him to win. Remember, he would never have placed the bet at all without my prompt.

I didn’t ask for a reward. I’m classier than that (just). But if roles were reversed, and I say this in all honesty, I would have bought the bloke a nice bottle of Scotch and maybe even given him 10 per cent of the prize.

This miserable bastard never even said thanks. So my question today is: should he have made some sort of gesture?

We’re keen to hear your comments on this. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience with a lottery ticket or something. If someone buys you a ticket and you win a big prize, surely you show your appreciation one way or another. Don’t you?

Originally published as The story of the miserable cheapskate who wouldn’t share a cent of his Melbourne Cup mystery bet windfall