There's one factor your didn't point out;
- You need to know how much you are chasing and how much you will lose incase the bet goes wrong.
In the subject matter OP brought, the gambler risked $1.4M to win less than $12k. This is purely insane and out of mind. I don't know who gave him the guts to do so. It could be that he has been using same strategy to win before now. This is a warning to people who believes in sure bet. There's nothing sure about betting.
I wanted to chip in something here. The $1.4M bet to win $12K is often very likely but you'll only see people with a huge amount of fund playing this kind of bet. Someone once told me that overly rich people don't need plenty odds to be profitable in gambling. With just a small odd, they can stake extremely high and get some good returns. The problem with this strategy is that you need to win between 10 to 150 times to get the same capital back. In the case of this gambler, he needed to wina bet with 1.01 odds 116 times to get back his initial bankroll.