Gambler fights Paddy Power over payment of £1.1m 'monster jackpot'

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A gambler is taking on betting giant Paddy Power in court, as she claims that she won over £1m on a single spin of an online slot machine and received an incorrect payout.

Coraline Durber, based in Gloucestershire, was told she had won the ‘monster jackpot’ of £1,097,132.71 while playing Paddy Power’s Alice in Wonderland-themed game The Wild Hatter during the COVID pandemic - back in October 2020.

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However, Durber only received £20,265.14 in her account. Upon her complaint, the gambling company said that an error had led to a ‘mismatch’ between the result that was shown to her, and the one that was determined by Paddy Power’s central computer server at their headquarters.

She was then shown a 45-page rulebook of the terms and services from the bookies, which they claimed justified their decision to not pay the £1m+ jackpot.

Durber is suing PPB entertainment, the company that owns Paddy Power, at London’s High Court, arguing that their refusal to pay out the prize breaks the games rules.

The court heard that Mrs Durber’s win came in on 18 October 2020. Her barrister Mark Baldock, told Judge Ritchie that: “The rules here say what you see is what you get.”

Phillip Hinks, representing Paddy Power, insisted that what is shown on screen to a customer is irrelevant ‘wallpaper’, and that the only meaningful action being the hidden generation of a random number by the host company’s central computer.

“The wheel is only an entertainment feature,” he added. “It’s a bit more fun. It doesn’t determine anything.”

The game itself is based around a five-by-four fruit machine style grid, where players aim to get matching symbols.

An additional bonus game can be triggered by matching three jackpot symbols, which is what Mrs Durber did, her barrister told the judge.

He stated: “According to the game rules, Mrs Durber then had to spin the jackpot wheel to determine which of the offered jackpot tiers will be won.

“This is what she did. The jackpot wheel, once spun, showed Mrs Durber that she had won the ‘monster jackpot’, ie £1,097,132.71. However, Mrs Durber’s account with the defendant was only credited with the considerably lesser sum of the ‘daily jackpot’: £20,265.14.

“Despite having played the slot according to the game rules, what Mrs Durber had in fact won was the daily jackpot. That was the result of the random number generation as recorded on the records hosted on Paddy Power’s server.”

The court was told that Paddy Power is relying on the terms and conditions of their online games, which state that the customer “fully accepts and agrees that random number generator software will determine all outcomes of the game” and that the bookie “will not be liable” for payouts offered as a result of “systems or communication errors”.

Her barrister, asking for the defence to be struck out, and the judgment granted for Mrs Durber, said the terms and conditions were not “sufficiently brought to Mrs Durber’s attention” and were “unenforceable”, as they clash with her rights in terms of online purchases under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and also the rules of Wild Hatter itself.

Baldock told the judge: “The terms and conditions are a 45-page document. It’s evidence of how murky these matters really are when you look at the 45 pages.” Arguing that Paddy Power were seeking to avoid paying out Durber’s big win.

But Hinks told the judge: “Everything is determined when the player clicks the button by the random number generator. Everything is wallpaper after that. The die is cast at the time the spin button is clicked.

“Online games like this one are games of chance. The outcome of every play is determined by random number generator software.

“On the date of the play, the game was the subject of a mapping error. The error affected the animations which were associated with the game and therefore the images with which Mrs Durber was presented when playing the game.”

The judge reserved his verdict on the strike out and summary judgment application after a day-long hearing, until a later date.