March Madness' chaotic first-round upsets helped one Ohio sports bettor turn a $300 bet into $35,000 on a six-way parlay

• A bettor made more than 11,000% profit during the opening round of March Madness last week.
• The bettor, from Ohio, scooped $35,206.30 from a $300 wager.
• Here's how they did it.

LAS VEGAS — An Ohio bettor may have placed the best wager from the opening weekend of March Madness, turning a $300 bet into $35,206.30 to mark an extraordinary 11,735% profit.

The bettor needed every leg of his six-way bet to fall in his favor, including picks of No. 15 seed Princeton and No. 10 Penn State, according to an Insider source from Caesars Entertainment's sportsbook.

The bet relied on top-seeded Alabama beating Texas A&M – Corpus Christi by more than eight points — which they did, with their 96-75 victory — for odds of -110.

Four of the bettor's picks included wins by way of a range of points.

The other results the bettor needed to go their way included:

• 7-seed Northwestern winning by a margin of 8 points or more in its 75-67 victory over Boise State (-110);
• Penn State winning by a margin of 6 points or more in its 76-59 victory over Texas A&M (-110);
• Princeton's shocking win over 2-seed Arizona for the Tigers' first NCAA tournament win since 1998 (+230);
  
• 1-seed Houston winning by a margin of 6 points or more in their 63-52 victory over Northern Kentucky (-110); 
  
• No. 9 Arkansas defeating No. 9 Illinois (+170)

Other interesting bets from the opening round, per Caesars Entertainment, included an Illinois bettor placing $2,000 on Princeton to win the title, at 200/1 odds, for a possible score of $400,000. After dumping Arizona out of the tournament, Princeton kept its run going with a second round win over Missouri. Princeton plays Creighton in the regional semifinals — the Sweet 16 — on Friday.

Elsewhere, a Kansas bettor placed an astonishing $150,000 for 2-seed Texas to beat 15-seed Colgate to win a whopping … $12,500.

Then, of course, there was Jim 'Mattress Mack' McIngvale who placed the first bet at Caesars new sportsbook at the Horseshoe in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and made sure it was a big one.

Mattress Mack backed Houston with a $1 million bet to win the NCAA men's championship

Mattress Mack — who most recently won around $75 million on a $10 million bet on the Astros to win the World Series last fall — again backed a hometown team, Houston, with a $1 million wager to win the entire thing. Should the Cougars win the NCAA men's championship, Mattress Mack will scoop another $8 million, plus his wager.

—Caesars Sportsbook (@CaesarsSports) December 12, 2022