Australian man spends $11 million on German lottery and gets a massive $60 million payday
A professional gambler has revealed that he spends over $6.5 BILLION a year on bets, including the lottery, poker and horse racing.
David Walsh, 61, is an Australian full-time gambler and lottery player who is part of a syndicate led by friend and rich lister Zeljko Ranogajec.
In 2022 the group bought one million tickets in a German lottery, spending $11 million, and won over $60 million from the audacious bet.
In 2015, publicity-shy Ranogajec surprisingly started a private Twitter page, and described himself then as: ‘Allegedly the world's biggest punter and high stake professional gambler.’
Walsh, a Tasmanian-born gambler and art lover has revealed how he played one of his life's biggest and most successful bets, and he says a lot of his success is luck.
The $60 million lottery investment was one of two of his biggest wins. The other was a $63 million horse racing windfall in Japan on Christmas eve, according to the Daily Mail.
Speaking to investors at Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference in Hobart, Tasmania recently, he stole the show when he said that he believes that much of the success in gambling and the stock market is down to luck.
The stock pickers and investment bankers attending reacted, but this mischievous comment is typical of Walsh.
Walsh said: "Finding a system that works and is stable and works for a long time is extremely difficult.”
The modest gambler said his success was mainly due to luck, and said the same reasoning applied to successful investors.
“If you've had a system that works for 20 years, it's not as a result of skill. You acquire the system that worked by luck, then once it worked, it might keep working.”
"But there's no difference in the level of skill of those that failed and those that succeeded," he noted.
Walsh joked that despite his massive winnings, one of the worst decisions he has made in life was to become a gambler.
He revealed that his life was not as glamorous as it seemed, as he was locked in an 'endless fight' with the Australian Taxation Office.
His gambling enterprise over the years has resulted in the ATO requesting him to pay a total of $37 million because of the profit he made from his betting.
The outstanding debt was resolved in 2012.