What are the odds you could win £1.7m betting online?

Prima facie, as the lawyers say, Andy Green is an ordinary sort of guy. A father of two, he works for a powder coating company. He lives in Washingborough, in Lincolnshire. He is 54 and has had four heart attacks and 11 heart procedures. An ordinary guy in not the best of health. But, if you cross him, he becomes extraordinary.

Andy Green has a habit of playing online casino games. One evening in January 2018, sitting on the sofa in his living room, after a hard day powder coating, he started playing blackjack on his phone. It turned into a hard day’s night. He didn’t finish until 5am the following day. By which time he had become a millionaire. Or thought he had.

Technically, he was playing “Frankie Dettori’s Magic 7”. For “a thrilling online casino experience”. According to the hype, “over £10 million can be won playing over 60 different and exciting jackpot games”. The jackpots are “some of the biggest jackpots available anywhere online”. 

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One figure that I saw bandied about online was £33,892,245.86. And the figure kept on creeping up even while I was looking at it. Up, not down. The astronomical jackpot is theoretically possible because this is a “linked” game in which players potentially from all over the world are playing and the jackpot accumulates over time.

The “Magic 7” part of it is an allusion to Frankie Dettori’s irrefutable achievement of riding all seven winners on the card in a single day at Ascot in September 1996. The game uses a backdrop of Ascot and several race-themed images and icons. And odds on certain cards (so-called “trophy cards”) of 7777-1. 

I think Frankie Dettori might want to take a close look at the games he is putting his name to. Because they might not be everything they appear to be on the face of it. The question is: are they kosher? Or are punters being conned? Is the “magic” part of it when the winnings you thought you had tucked away suddenly disappear into thin air?

Green knew what he was doing where blackjack was concerned. Blackjack is “pontoon” by a different name. The idea is to get 21 or as close to as possible (the game is also known as “Vingt-un”), ideally with a face card (10 points) plus an ace (which counts as one or 11). The dealer deals you two cards and you have to decide whether to “stand” (or “stick”, ie take no more cards), “hit” (take another), or “surrender”.

On this particular night, Green turned out to be on a run of good fortune. He also had a system of sorts. “The key is to keep your eye on what the banker is doing,” he says. “The banker isn’t allowed to stick.” It looked as if his system was finally paying off. He started with a small stake: 75 pence a hand. In the game, he was sitting at a chair in the casino. To begin with, it didn’t go particularly well. At one point he was nearly down to zero. Then he started winning a bit.

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Then he got a very good hand and found, when he looked at his running total, that he had won more £10,000. It was after midnight. Time to call it a night and go to bed. Green dragged himself up the stairs with the phone still in his hand. He wisely kept the £10,000 to one side and bet the few hundred on top. He didn’t expect to win. His streak, he thought, was over. Within 10 minutes his winnings had risen to £20,000.

He could – perhaps should – have stopped there, but he thought to himself, “Is this my lucky night?” So he carried on, into the small hours, sitting on his bed. He upped the stake again, to £5 a go. Now, according to the image on his phone, he was sitting at not one but two chairs at the table, so he was playing more than one hand simultaneously, like some kind of chess grandmaster.

Then he won again and his winnings jumped up to £36,000. It was approaching 4am. Green was tired, but at the same time he was no longer tired. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” he reasoned. He upped the stake one last time.

Now he was sitting on all three chairs simultaneously. He was paying £125 per hand. Big money. He had never bet that much before. But he had a good feeling. Common sense told him to stop playing and take his winnings and go to sleep finally. But his instinct told him to keep on going. He was still on a roll. “It was a logical progression,” he says. “It wasn’t like I’d won the jackpot on £2 a go.”

He was still up and down. Then all of a sudden, it was Christmas and birthday all rolled into one. With zeroes on the end of it. Have a look at the balance on his online betting slip. There is no doubt about it. The figure specified at the top of it is £1,722,500. And 24 pence.

When Green looked at it he burst into tears, half-laughing and half-crying at the same time. The first thing he did was to call up his girlfriend. “What’s wrong?” she said. She assumed, at half past five in the morning, it was some kind of medical emergency. “You’re not going to believe this,” said Green. She didn’t believe it but in the end she was forced to accept it.

At 6.30am, Green phoned up the number on the Betfred website. “I tried withdrawing the money,” he said. “It says ‘You’re successful’, but the money is still there, online.”

“Ah, yes,” said the Betfred guy, “we have to do it manually. I’ll do it for you now.”

He took Green through security. Logged into Green’s account. “Bloody hell!” he burst out, “You’re a millionaire!” He explained that it was no wonder that he couldn’t withdraw all that. That would have to be done by the VIP team. They were not in until 9am. All he had to do was call back a few hours later.

Green duly called back. Customer Service congratulated him. “You’re the person who has won a million,” they said.

“Well, it’s £1,722,500, to be exact,” said Green.

“It’s going to have to be done by the Accounts Office,” said Customer Service.

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That day, a Friday, Green still went to work, powder coating in Grimsby. In the rain. He was inwardly singing in the rain though, in the secret knowledge that he was the only millionaire powder coater in Grimsby.

The next day he was in touch with the Accounts Office. The Accounts Office congratulated him. He was not only a millionaire he was also officially a Betfred VIP. “Great!” said Green. Lots of congratulations, but no actual money.

On the following day, the third day after Green had won, they said they would be sending the winnings just as soon as they had conducted the “checks”. It was nothing to worry about, standard procedure. The money would be sent just as soon as. In the meantime, Mr Green might like to set up a separate bank account that the money could be paid into.

That weekend, Green, triumphant, took his entire family to his local Wetherspoons for a slap-up meal with drinks. The bill was around £2,500. He was already overdrawn. But since he was a millionaire, he wasn’t too worried.

On the fifth day after he had won, he got another call, this time from a Betfred director, Russell Young. Young explained that, alas, there had been a “glitch” of some kind. Nothing to do with Betfred, it was all down to the software, created by Playtech. Given this mysterious glitch, the best they could offer him was £30,000. Not £1,722,500 and 24 pence, but a measly £30k. 

Green – and who could blame him? – was not satisfied. “Show me proof of this glitch,” he demanded. But they couldn’t show him any proof. They weren’t allowed to. He could rest assured that there really was a glitch. Green wasn’t having it and put the phone down.

Ten minutes later, Young called him back and offered him £60,000. Double the original offer, plus reimbursement of the Wetherspoons bill – but still over a million and a half short of the real figure. Green said: “I’ll take the £60,000 – but only if you show me proof there really was a glitch.” Young said, we can’t show you the proof. Green replied: “Then I can’t accept your offer either. I have to assume you have destroyed the evidence.”

Green didn’t accept the “glitch” argument. Even if the unknown, unverified, unwitnessed glitch existed, Green had an account with Betfred, not with Playtech. If Betfed was using Playtech software, then surely that was its responsibility, not his. Not so, say Betfred, according to some very obscure small print tucked away somewhere around page 36 of its terms and conditions.

Betfred kept on pestering Green. Calling him and leaving text messages: “The money is waiting for you!” All he had to do was click on the bit where it says “gagging clause” or non-disclosure agreement. He could have the sixty thousand but he had to agree to keep quiet about it.

I would wager that most people would have folded at this stage, taken the money and run. Consider: you are up against an enormous organisation with practically unlimited resources in the realm of lawyers and accountants. Betfred is also based in Gibraltar (I wonder why?) And £60,000 is still a hell of a lot of money. Definitely better than a kick in the teeth even if not quite up there with £1,722,500 and 24 pence. As Green says: “These big companies – they rely on you not fighting.”

But Green was not just anybody. Instead of folding, he started searching online – using the very same phone he had won all his money on – for legal eagles offering “pro bono” services. He was going to stand: no surrender.

The senior clerk referred the case to Peter Coyle of Coyle White Devine in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. “I was sceptical at the outset,” says Coyle. “I’m not a gambler. How can someone win a million on a mobile phone in Lincolnshire?” But inside 10 minutes of a conversation with Green he was convinced.

More than two years on and Betfred had still not come up with Exhibit A – the “glitch” or “malfunction”. Peter Coyle did not give credence to their case. “They’ve never made any attempt to produce evidence. It still feels like this huge juggernaut rolling over the little guy.” Coyle’s argument mirrors Green’s: that if there had been a glitch then Betfed needed to take it up with Playtech, not with Green.

Three weeks ago the case went in front of a High Court judge in London, Mrs Justice Foster, for a “summary judgment”. This relatively unusual judicial procedure involves a high threshold of proof. The barrister for Green had to demonstrate that, even if you accept the Betfred argument, the company still couldn’t conceivably win their case in a full-on trial. Team Green had to prove, in other words, that there would be very long odds on Betfred to win versus Andy Green. Say 7777-1.

Coyle was giving modest odds of 50/50 as to whether or not Green would win the judgment. The line of least resistance is to kick the bottle down the road and pass the case on. But there is one point that Coyle emphasises: “There were 26 other people playing the game at the same time. So far as we know Betfred was happy to take the money off the other 25. They didn’t give it back to them on account of the ‘malfunction’. Andy was playing for six or seven hours. There was nothing wrong with the software in all that time. But they are saying, in effect, when you win we won’t pay up.”

In their guarded comments on the case, Playtech has spoken of a “technical issue” and Betfred refers to a “software malfunction”. But malfunction or not, the plain fact is we are a nation of gamblers. Forty-seven per cent of Brits have gambled in the last four weeks. Including me (I lost, placing a bet on West Ham to win). In 2019, the gambling industry in this country was worth £14.2bn. And we should add that gambling addiction is estimated to cost the country in the region of £1.2 billion every year. According to the statistics, millions have had their lives ruined by gambling and hundreds have committed suicide as a result.

We are living in a betogenic environment. If you watch a football match on television, invariably there will be an ad encouraging you to place a bet at half-time. In the 2019-20 season, half of Premier League teams and 17 out of 24 Championship teams had deals with betting firms and were proudly displaying their logos on their shirts. No matter what the name on the back, Burnley players are Lovebet, West Ham’s are Betway, and Everton’s are Sportpesa. It’s like the sponsors have taken over the teams.

Wayne Rooney, England’s all-time number one goalscorer, allegedly is or was a big gambler. He has admitted to having had a “gambling addiction” at one stage in his career. Now he is player-coach at Derby County – whose shirts are emblazoned with the name of 32Red.

A House of Lords committee has recommended that Premier League teams should not be allowed to advertise betting companies. But clubs earn nearly £350m from the relationship. In the wake of the pandemic, and the desperate hunger for revenue, the hook-up with gambling is likely to become more attractive rather than less.

They say “the house always wins”. In the long run. Bookmakers have always been reluctant to let winners win. Their fundamental principle is that they win when you lose. But the reality is that they still win even when you win. It’s part of the business model.

Look at Betfred, for example. Its CEO, Fred Done, is a billionaire. Denise Coates, founder and CEO of Bet365, was paid £323m in salary and bonuses in 2018. She is the highest paid executive of any UK company. Her net worth is reckoned to be in the billions. All that vast ocean of money can only come from one source – the punters.

There is a tradition of “welshing” or “welching” on – failing to honour – a bet. The term is believed to date from the 19th century when certain unscrupulous bookmakers who were reluctant to pay out would regularly flee over the border into Wales, thus becoming known as “welshers”.

Every now and then bookmakers have to pay out big time, for example when unfancied Leicester City won the league in 2016 under Claudio Ranieri. Some of them had offered crazy odds of 5,000-1. The industry as a whole is reckoned to have lost £25m on that one. They won’t be doing that again. I think even West Ham are at odds of a mere 500-1 to win the title. 

Back in 1967, when rank outsider Foinavon won the Grand National after all the other horses went down, the odds were only 100-1. The victorious Greek football team was at 150-1 to win the Euros in 2004. It was 500-1 when the England cricket team beat Australia in 1981 after we had been forced to follow on and were heading for certain disaster (until Ian Botham saved the day).

Accumulator bets can also be another big loser for the bookmaker. I wish I’d had a tenner on Frankie Dettori on his record-breaking streak, at odds of 25,051-1. In 2008 Fred Craggs placed a 50 pence bet on an eight-horse accumulator – and won half a million.

Then there are the very rare semi-miraculous bets. In 2006 Adrian Hayward had a dream. He dreamed that Xabi Alonso, playing for Liverpool, scored a goal from inside his own half. Convinced that his dream was prophetic, he placed £200 on Alonso to score from behind the halfway line at odds of 125-1. He won £25,000 when Alonso scored long-distance in a cup game against Luton. The bookmaker, Paddy Power, not only paid up but used the occasion as an opportunity to promote further gambling: “When he placed the bet we thought it was the easiest £200 we had ever made. But fair play to him. It’s great when these unusual bets pay out and it shows that dreams do come true.”

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Bookies like to take your money but they really hate to give it back again. They can ban winners – casinos often do this, fearing that the regular winner has come up with a system or a wheeze that defeats the house. Estimates suggest that as many as 50,000 gamblers have had their accounts restricted or closed.

A betting site can legitimately refuse to pay out. There is what was known as a “palpable error” where, for example, the bookmaker has simply made a mistake in chalking up the odds (where 1/10 comes out as 10/1, for example). Then there is the small print. If you ever bet on Beckham to score, but he did so in extra time, or in the penalty shootout, then you will have been made aware of the condition which says that the bet only applies to 90 minutes, not more.

But “technicalities” can be spurious or at least dubious. Take the case of Sam Oldham’s grandmother. She thought she had landed her 200-1 £5 bet on her grandson to win an Olympic medal at the 2012 London Olympics. One thousand pounds should have been hers, surely, because he actually won a medal. It seems obvious. But – this was the catch – it was a team medal. Oldham won a bronze with the gymnastics team. The bookies argued that the bet was really for an individual medal. And they won the case. Funnily enough, the bookies in question were none other than Betfred.

Following the Andy Green imbroglio, Betfred has already changed its terms and conditions to make it easier to claim “glitches”. So, argues Coyle, Betfred has implicitly acknowledged that it didn’t have the right back in 2018 to fall back on this get-out clause. It has also accepted that English law applies and not Gibraltese law (which was its first line of argument).

Green feels that he is fighting not just for the £1,722,500.24. “Yes, you’re gambling,” he says, “but how many of us do the lottery? Someone has got to win. You do it with the hope it could be you. Same with the Grand National. But now when that does happen and you do win, they won’t let you win. Imagine your six numbers come up and Camelot says ‘the machine wasn’t working properly’. Would you accept that?”

Personally, I don’t think I would.

At the High Court, Betfred counsel maintained that certain “trophy cards” were building up in the player’s favour, at odds of 7777-1. But they shouldn’t have done. Not really.

If the ruling does go in his favour, Green stands to win £2m, including interest on the original winnings. If he loses he can still take Betfred to a full trial. He’s already drunk the champagne, but he’s still keeping a bottle on ice. He reckons the case has gone about as well as it could, “short of me walking away with the two million. If I do win it will give others the encouragement not to be taken in by these people.”

You can’t help but wonder: how many Andy Greens are there out there, in a similar position, who have won big and have been “persuaded” to accept some much smaller sum? If Andy Green wins, I expect to see a lot more coming out and saying how they’ve been done over by bookies. “The same happened to me!”

I would bet on it.