Graham Calvert Unlucky Loser Or Robbed?
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15 February 2008 /
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UNLUCKY! Or bad play. What it was, you lost.
Now pay up and live to play another day.
Or not. Not if you're Graham Calvert.
Mr Calvert is not a happy loser. He wants bookies William Hill to pay back his £2million losses.
He claims Hills should have stopped taking his money when he asked them to bar him because he was an addict.
Mr Calvert is a valuable customer, or he was.
Hills took £3.5million of his money, and retained £2,028,858 of it. Bets included a record £347,000 on the US to win the 2006 Ryder Cup.
Mr Calvert now owes £1.5million. His life is changed. Says he: "This has ruined my life. It was like taking heroin."
While this is not a poker issue, it is one of gambling. Where do you draw the line at being responsible for your own actions?
Opinions are many. Tony's blog calls is "pathetic whining".
Lawyer Tony Coles from Jeffrey Green Russell, says:
"There have been a number of similar cases in America: a lot of casinos offer self-exclusion programmes and cases have tested what happens when a casino messes up and allows a person back in to gamble, and what happens when the gambler says he no longer wishes to be self-excluded...and what happens when people have masqueraded as someone else to get round a self-exclusion that they or more usually their family have put in place.
And:
"Negligence is the way to argue this case and I think the judge will certainly listen to Mr Calvert. It depends rather a lot on the facts. How careful were William Hill, did he really self-exclude himself, and did he go out of his way to get round it?"
The Poker Anorak is not armed with all the facts. But checking Mr Calverts's credit hardly seems possible when he is gambling in cash, as is reported.
Is the bookmaker obliged to ask if it is the punter's own money?
Hills spokesman Graham Sharpe has so far declined to comment on the case but said that self-exclusion was not foolproof as people who requested it could open accounts in other names or ask someone else to place bets for them. He said it was the "customer's responsibility" to cease gambling.
Where does the responsibility for addiction lie, with the addict or the supplier?
Discuss...
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