I’ve never met Tom Waterhouse. I don’t know him as a bloke or a bookmaker. But that doesn’t stop me from knowing a bad deal when I see one.

He’s probably a convivial enough bloke – chatty, kind to his friends and family, generous to charities and all that.

I think it’s got something to do with the way he looks in a suit. Or the way he has four generations of Waterhouse betting in his blood. Or the way he wanders into the arena during important sporting events, just like that serial pest Peter Hore.

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Last year Tom vowed to scale back his saturated advertising after a public outcry.

But clearly he’s still looking for ways to do his work as a bookmaker, to lift us up by the ankles until all the change falls out our pockets.

This week he’s launched a new marketing campaign – give Tom 10 bucks, pick the first 10 horses in the Melbourne Cup in correct order and Tom will give you $25 million.

Not a bad offer, right? Like a Cup day Tatts Lotto.

Well, thanks to the good people at The Conversation (people with better mathematical minds than yours truly), they’ve deemed the odds of correctly picking the top 10 horses in the Cup as around one in 670 billion.

As they note, it makes the one in 45 million on offer for winning Oz Lotto look positively inviting.

So, in effect, you’d be better off just finding Tom on Cup day, pulling a blue note out of your wallet and giving it to him.

The Conversation suggest a donation to a charity like Beyond Blue (who spend a good deal of their time and resources dealing with the fallout of problem gambling) as an alternative.

A very, very good idea.

Still, there’s something about the sound of that $25 million. It’s got me thinking.

With that kind of value on offer, I’m half thinking about getting myself a Tom Waterhouse account, and trying to pick the first 10 horses in the Melbourne Cup. It might be a long shot, a very, very, very, very long shot, but it’s also $25 million.

I could do that.