'Why I bet £900k on the Scottish referendum'

An anonymous man bet £900,000 on a "No" vote in the Scottish independence referendum. He won. Here he talks through his thought process.

This was not a reckless gamble. Losing this money would have seriously hurt. But I wouldn't have lost my house - although maybe my wife would have had something to say about it.

I'd call it responsible gambling. And my main advice would be "don't try this at home". But I'd prefer to call this a reasoned wager. For me it was almost an investment.

I made the bet in four instalments but I'd always planned to wage £900,000. I staggered it in the hope that the odds would improve closer to the time - they didn't. The best I got was 1-4. So for every £4 I bet, I'd get £5 back.

So although I received a cheque for £1,093,333.33, my actual winnings were just under £200,000.

The first time I walked in to the William Hill I tried to place a bet of £400,000. The bookies weren't set up to take it. They could only process £9,000 deposits at a time so it would have taken almost a whole day of separate transactions. By the time we organised a better solution the next day, the odds had worsened.

I've had a career in finance in which I've had to make projections and limit risk as much as possible. These were my savings, my money, but I felt I'd done enough research to be sure of the outcome.

It was a decision taken in conjunction with my wife. And although I bounced a few ideas off other friends, nobody else knew what we were doing.

But really I stumbled into this wager. This is not something I've done before.

I'm a bit of a data geek and information nerd. I was trying to look at what the impact might be of Scottish independence. I'm a committed unionist. So I wasn't purely an impassionate observer. But while my interest in the topic came from the heart, the analysis of the data was hard-headed.