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By Max Meyer

Kevin LaRose and his wife Ann Marie were doing what you would expect any married couple to do on a Saturday night—sitting around and checking score updates of a Utah Valley vs. Wyoming college basketball game.

LaRose had wrapped up the first 24 legs of his 25-leg parlay at Caesars Sportsbook. The one leg that separated his $25 wager from winnings of $237,553.11 was Wyoming -8 (-110). It was a tight battle between Wyoming and Utah Valley in the second half, with the underdog Wolverines even grabbing a 3-point lead with under 10 minutes to go.

He pulled off some close calls earlier in the day, including Richmond moneyline -475 against Toledo after the Spiders were down 17 at the half and Clippers moneyline -360 vs. the Magic thanks to a Reggie Jackson game-winning jumper with 2.2 seconds remaining. But he needed one more final push to get his parlay over the hump.

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LaRose first started betting with William Hill/Caesars Sportsbook when New Jersey legalized sports betting in June 2018. Monmouth Park Sports Book by William Hill was under an hour drive from his house in Carteret, New Jersey, which was a big factor for him in choosing where he would bet. The 64-year-old has worked in construction for around the past 20 years, and has been sports betting for a while as well.

His favorite type of wager is a parlay, which he says are the majority of the bets that he places with Caesars Sportsbook.

“I usually try to put in one giant parlay whenever there’s enough games to choose from,” LaRose said. “I like college basketball, there’s a lot of games you can choose from on Saturdays. I wanted to get to 25 games for this parlay, and I needed a couple more so I checked out the NBA. I don’t really bet the NBA that much, but I saw those teams and I felt they had a good shot at pulling off the wins.”

On the morning of Dec. 11, LaRose was scouring the games and trying to figure out which sides he wanted to include. After grabbing his coffee, he spends about an hour researching teams’ quality of schedule, how they perform on the road and at home, and other key factors. He wasn’t off to a good start, as two other parlays busted earlier in the day. Yet, LaRose still liked a lot of the sides he had left, so he built out a 25-leg one that he squeezed in just before the 3 p.m. ET games tipped off.

“I don’t really watch the games that much after placing the parlay,” LaRose said. “Once it’s in, I go about my business. I open up the app and check it as the day goes on to check the scores and see who’s doing what. One thing I can tell you about college basketball, you can be losing by 20 in the first half but come back and win by 20. If you’re watching it, you could really get stressed. I don’t like to think like that, so I go about and do my thing so I don’t think about it as much. I didn’t even know Richmond was down by 17 at the half. That’s why I don’t like watching all the games, then your mentality gets screwed up and it can drag you down.

“For this particular parlay, I was cruising around that afternoon and was working on my truck. I went in on the app and I saw I got seven [legs] out of the way and I had three that were going that were looking good. Sometime in the evening, my wife asked to go to the store and get a few things. So I got out of Wegmans, and I’m looking at the app and I saw I had 15 games and the others that were going on were looking good.”

He then stopped by U-Yee Sushi & Hibachi, where his friend is the manager. After downing his dinner and talking with his buddy about the parlay, he realized that he only had a couple legs to go with a monster payday awaiting. He drove back home to his wife of 37 years, who was monitoring the standing of his wager.

“When I walked in, my wife was like ‘Kevin you’re down to two’ because I told her what games I had,” LaRose said. “UCLA [ML -300 over Marquette] was up big, so that one was over with. Wyoming, that game wasn’t on TV, so I had to watch it on CBS Sports app and get updates from there. I was up by 12 at half, and the first thing Utah Valley did was go on a 10-1 run to start the second half. Then they go up by three and I’m like ‘S---.’ At the 6-minute mark I’m up by one possession, then I’m up by a couple more, it was real slow.

“Right around the 2-minute mark, I’m like ‘I’m right there.’ Next thing I see I’m up by nine with over a minute left. Next thing I know I’m up by 10, and then the next update jumps to 12 seconds and I’m up by 12. I told my wife, ‘I got it, they’re just gonna walk the ball up.’ Then it said final and I took a picture of the Caesars Sportsbook screen that congratulated me for winning $237,000 and change. It was awesome, I popped open a bottle of wine and we stayed up until like 4:30 in the morning.”

So just how historic was LaRose’s parlay? There have been 112 25-leg parlays that have cashed at Caesars Sportsbook. The highest winning amount on the previous 111? $3,400. Because LaRose threw in 10 spread bets with -110 juice on his parlay compared to just putting in huge moneyline favorites and laying heavier numbers, his $237,553.11 winnings was substantially higher than the others.

For LaRose, he will continue to cook up massive parlays each college basketball Saturday. With several slates jam-packed with action on the horizon, his usual weekend routine isn’t going away anytime soon.

“I’ll hit one again,” LaRose said. “I guarantee we’ll be having another conversation, I promise you."

Check out every leg from Kevin LaRose’s winning 25-leg parlay below.