Since the player was from Poland the email would have had to say "Poland is now eligible ..." for your statement to be true. That was not the case therefore I don't think your exception applies. The Terms clearly contradicted what the email said and who accepts spammy email as the final word on anything. Yes, it's a f***ed up situation but the line has to be drawn somewhere and the extenuating circumstances put the player on the "no joy" side of that line. IMO. YMMV.
The UK consumer laws might see this differently. If a customer is sent an invitation from a business that states "your country", it would be considered reasonable for the customer to take this at face value to mean the country they were living in. UK law does not use the concept of Caveat Emptor in the case of consumer contracts because it deems there to be an unequal relationship between the consumer and the business. Unlike business to business, where a contract is negotiated between equal parties, a consumer contract is "imposed" on the "David" by the "Goliath" in the relationship. The law does not expect the consumer to have extensive knowledge of the internal workings of marketing, and so it would expect that a consumer would take an offer at face value, not try to look for subtle clues in order to judge whether or not it was true. Even more surprising for business is that even explicit terms and conditions can be struck out in law if they are deemed to be "unfair" in a consumer to business relationship. Some businesses have found this out the hard way by being rather too creative with the "smallprint" as well as being deliberately misleading during the sales process.
Whilst this is how the UK law works, it is derived from an EU consumer protection directive that all states were expected to implement, so there is likely to be an equivalent concept in Polish law.
However, someone went the extra mile to deceive by adding that line "your country is now eligible" into what was otherwise a bog standard mass mailing. If there had been no change to the eligibility criteria in the terms, why on earth was this email even created, let alone sent to the wrong players due to a marketing cockup.
On the face of it, ANY email sent to a player, such as from their VIP host, offering them a variation in the terms and conditions that is not reflected in the published terms on the website should be viewed with extreme caution lest they end up in the same position, and find that "published terms are the ones that prevail" when they get screwed over and seek mediation.
I had a similar experience many years ago with Winward casino. I discovered that UK was not in the drop down list, even though a UK facing site had them high in the list of recommendations. I sent an email, and CS replied to say that they had not been accepting UK players, but had recently changed this policy, and if I selected another country they would manually change it to UK. I had barely started out, so I took this at face value, and fortunately they HONOURED the promise, and did pay when I won. Had they reneged on the deal, they could have screwed me over by quoting the published terms, and complaining to one of the player focussed forums then might have given me a very different view of how player focussed they really were.
It was only later on that I discovered what a close shave I had experienced, as this was a casino with a far less savoury reputation than I had been lead to believe, and also I learned that many of these sites that pretended at face value to offer impartial reviews were rogue affiliates who would write whatever BS it took for players to click through and earn them some commission. The same site had Warren Cloud's Crystal palace next on it's "highly recommended" list
These marketing "dirty tricks" need to be stamped out, and blaming affiliates isn't good enough. Casinos are perfectly capable of making life very unpleasant for these affiliates, yet so many seem to be getting off lightly. They should bear in mind that this tactic would not work under UK law as the casino would be held responsible for the rogue actions of it's employees and agents. Some casinos have already found this out the hard way, and sensible casinos like 32Red pre-empted trouble by sending instructions to it's affiliates that they must abide by these laws when marketing the brand (at least within the UK), and also must no longer use unapproved marketing materials.
Casino Rewards have had their knuckles rapped a few times by the ASA for not being so strict with it's affiliates.
