an eye for the main chance

an eye on/for/to the main chance

The continuous seeking of opportunities to advance oneself or make money. The term often refers to someone who is ambitious without consideration of others. Primarily heard in UK, Australia. You just have an eye on the main chance—you don't care if I succeed or fail.
See also: chance, eye, main, on
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

an eye for the main chance

or

an eye on the main chance

BRITISH, INFORMAL
If someone has an eye for the main chance or an eye on the main chance, they are always looking for an easy opportunity to make money or to improve their situation. Are these the words of a genuine football reformer, or an opportunist with an eye for the main chance? You make your own money and luck by being out in the world with your eye on the main chance. Note: You can also say that someone looks for the main chance or takes the main chance. He was just an idle boaster looking for the main chance.
See also: chance, eye, main
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.
See also:
  • an eye on/for/to the main chance
  • for (one's) (own) sake
  • for sake
  • keep (someone or something) in sight
  • keep in sight
  • keep sight of
  • keep sight of (someone or something)
  • keep sight of somebody/something
  • leave (someone, something, or oneself) (wide) open for (something)
  • leave oneself wide open for
References in periodicals archive
We need not waste our time - or votes - on callow careerists with an eye for the main chance.
He had a quick wit, an eye for the main chance and he always managed to find time for a cuppa, a ciggie, a pint, a football match and a bet - and not necessarily in that order.
Educated and cultured he might have been, but he had an eye for the main chance.
Here he is always with an eye for the main chance, looking at Barack Obama's book, and thinking: "I'll have some of that." Obama wrote his.
Like his father, he had an eye for the main chance and marriage to Margaret of Beaufort gave him a dynastic alliance with the royal Lancastrians.
It's tempting to see Abu Izzadeen and Anjem Choudary as loudmouth rabble-rousers with an eye for the main chance. Both men have reinvented themselves, Izzadeen from electrician Trevor Brooks born into a Christian Jamaican family in Hackney.
Preston certainly has an eye for the main chance. After his reality TV exploits and hooking up with a chav princess, he's enrolled the excellent Lady S to bolster the OBs.
Scientists all have an eye for the main chance and if they happen on some matter of doubt that can be spun into a health scare, they sniff the air and on the breeze comes the heady smell of research grants, the establishment of new facilities ( in other words ( money and enhanced reputations.
Victor Chandler does not seem to have broken any laws or rules, but simply had an eye for the main chance. And good old Billy Hills would have been in heaps of hot water if passing on details of accounts just because a group of old boys asked for it.
WHILE the politicians, the venture capitalists and the developers with an eye for the main chance pick over the dying body of ASW, spare a thought for the human cost of the steel giant's collapse.
45 MIN - Always an eye for the main chance, Scholes picked out Phillips in a bid to restore England's lead.
Now they're warming hearts throughout the land, pushing baby buggies down the High Street with the air of S-Type cats who've got the cream.Even wily old Tesco with an eye for the main chance have come up with a tape for fathers-to-be.
He then decided to head home and landed a lead role in a Mexican musical and with an eye for the main chance he invited television producers to come and watch him perform.
There young Quinn left school early with a strong line in flirtatious charm and an eye for the main chance.
If his on-site colleagues in the construction industry ever had one eye on passing girls, Richard has an eye for the main chance, saying, 'Generally, it is the women in a relationship who will do the leg work in searching out a place to live.