Unlike most of the players on this list, Andy Green is not a maths wizard, a strategic genius, or a sleight of hand trickster, he is just an average bloke from Lincolnshire who fancied a game of online blackjack.
What is exceptional about Andy, is that over a 6 hour play session and with just a £100 starting balance, he won the game’s jackpot – 3 times. His balance when he finished was £1,722,923.54.
This would normally be a cause for celebration, and indeed it was for the first few days after his big win; Andy even extended his overdraft and spent £2,500 enjoying himself while waiting for the windfall.
However, the mood soon changed when an unexpected call from Betfred, the company with which Mr. Green had been playing the game, contained some devastating news.
This story starts in 2018, but it took almost 3 years to reach its’ conclusion.
Faulty Software
Betfred had looked into the win and decided that there was a glitch with the software that stopped the game Andy had been playing (Frankie Dettori’s Magic Seven Blackjack) from correctly resetting after each game.
This, they said, was covered under their terms and conditions and so the jackpot wins were null and void and they would not be paying out the £1.7 million that had already shown up in Andy’s betting account.
The game was provided by a third party (Playtech), so the betting company claimed they were not responsible for the error and thus under no obligation to pay the winnings, although they did offer £30,000 as a gesture of goodwill.
When Mr Green complained and threatened to take the matter further this amount was upped to £60,000 on the condition that he no longer talked about the win, but once again Mr Green refused to take the money.
Taking Betfred to Court
With Green refusing to go down quietly, and Betfred refusing to pay up, it was only a matter of time before things went down the legal route.
This happened in April of 2019, when Betfred were taken to the high court and sued for £2 million in a classic David vs Goliath legal battle.
Taking on a huge company with lots of money in the bank to fight such a case is no mean feat, and indeed Mr Green was said to have suffered so much stress during the time the case was taking place that he wished he had never won the money in the first place.
However, in March of 2021 the case had been concluded, and Mr Green had beaten the odds a fourth time and taken down the mighty Betfred.
His winnings were granted to him plus the interest he would have earned on it over the years the whole debacle was going on.
Why Andy Green Beat Betfred
Immediately after his win, Andy was contacted by Betfred and congratulated on his success. He also received email communication to the same effect, financial advice from the casino, and the money had actually shown up in his online casino account too – he had taken a screenshot.
All of this shows that Betfred made the decision to delay and ultimately withhold the payout after the fact.
They say that Playtech informed them of the error four days after the win, and only then did they decide to withhold the money, but this was not good enough for the judge presiding over the case.
Ultimately though, it was the wording of their terms and conditions which let Betfred down.
The clauses relating to game errors were found to be inadequate and described as neither transparent nor fair, with the judge deciding that the company were not entitled to rely on them.
The case was a huge win for Andy Green, but also for online gamblers as a whole, because it proved that if wrong has been done, the little guy can take on the big corporations and win.
So while he might not have had a huge impact on the game of blackjack, it was through playing blackjack that Andy Green had an impact on the wider casino industry, in the UK at least.