The markets are crumbling, job security is a thing of the past and your house is probably worth less than you paid for it. But for thousands of Britons this weekend the promise of economic salvation could lie at the finishing post of a racecourse.

One lucky punter could walk away with £3.5 million, the biggest payout in British betting history, for simply predicting the winners of six horse races.

Today an estimated 100,000 people will enter the bet, called Scoop6, which was designed nine years ago to produce lottery-style winners for small stakes. For a £2 minimum wager, punters can choose six horses to win six separate races, each to be shown live on Channel 4 this afternoon. If all six horses chosen win, then, like picking six correct numbers on the National Lottery, the jackpot is won. The odds are pretty good, at least better than the 14 million-to-one chance of winning the Lotto. The winner then gets the chance of another £1.5 million for picking the winner of one race next Saturday.

John Haigh, a statistics expert at the University of Sussex, estimates that punters with a reasonable knowledge of the sport can narrow the odds of winning the jackpot to less than 20,000-1. At those odds, winning is 700 times more likely than predicting the lottery and, according to William Hill, roughly similar to the chances of getting struck by lightning on a golf course.

After each race – the first at 2.10pm and the last at 3.50pm – those with losing tickets drop out of contention for the prize. Last week 19 ticketholders had picked five winners, but none of them had backed the winner of the last race.

One of them, a client of Betfair, came agonisingly close to winning last week’s jackpot of more than £2 million. But his sixth choice, Maneki Neko, was caught by Sunnyhillboy on the run-in.

In fact, no one has won the Scoop6 wager for the past 11 weeks, causing almost £2 million to roll over to today’s jackpot.

The recession has already prompted a rise in gambling, with lottery ticket sales up by 7.6 per cent in the past six months. But the Scoop6 jackpot has encouraged thousands of people who have never before bet on horses to visit their local bookmakers.

Unusually for the sport, winners of Scoop6 are not dominated by gnarled gambling professionals poring over the Racing Post. Last year Agnes Haddock, 51, from Cheshire, who ran an ironing business and had no previous racing knowledge, won £700,000 after betting £2.

“I chose the last winner because it was number 13,” she told The Times. “My birthday is on December 13.” Ms Haddock is betting £4,000 today as part of a syndicate of more than 1,000 people.

But that pales in comparison with some of the six-figure sums expected to be wagered by syndicates when betting shops open this morning. Harry Findlay, the owner of Denman, the winner of this year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup, told The Times that he would gamble “well over six figures” on the Scoop6 races today. “I’ll be laying out more than I can afford to lose because of the value of the bet,” he said.

“The unique thing about the Scoop6 is that the small players, the £2 or £4 punters, have almost as much value as the bigger players and syndicates.”

Another high-roller is Richard Brocklebank, a serial Scoop6 winner known as The Squirrel, who bet nearly £60,000 last week. He is planning on betting significantly more today.

The odds of anyone selecting all six winners depend on the number of horses running in each race, as well as which horses are selected. But the more you know about racing, the bigger advantage you have.

Even so, in the past three years punters placing £2 have won as many times as the syndicates, making the bet extremely attractive for ordinary betters. In 2004 Ron Nicholson won £878,939 on a £4 bet. Last year almost £2 million was paid out to three people who each bet only £2.

If one person won the £3.5 million jackpot today, and £1.5 million on the bonus race next week, it would smash the previous highest betting payout in Britain of £1.5 million last year.

“If turnover is what punters think, there will be £5 million in a combined pool, which is enormous,” Damian Walker, a totesport spokesman, said.

By comparison, totesport took only £3.8 million in bets on all nine races on Cheltenham Gold Cup day this year, despite a record turnout at the course. But if no one wins this week, the expected payout next Saturday could be even higher – as much as £10 million. Totesport initially offered 50-1 against the possibility of £4 million being bet. But on Thursday night they had to suspend the market when gamblers pushed the odds to 2-1.