[traeth]

Can any of us do this when we get a bad run of losers?

this story from the bbc

How a gambling addict lost £2.1m
By Danny Savage
BBC News



Mr Calvert placed up to 20 bets a day at £30,000 a punt

A man is suing William Hill for more than £2m, money he lost gambling after asking the bookmaker not to let him bet again.
At just 28 years old, Graham Calvert has achieved a great deal. He built his reputation as a greyhound trainer and became one of the best in Britain.
It was a job which earned him up to £30,000 a month and he built up savings of nearly £700,000.
He was even chosen to train dogs for international competitions and his reputation should have ensured a prosperous future.
But it has all been ruined by his gambling habit which has cost him his career, family life and business.
Run an internet search for the words "Ryder Cup punter" and one of the first items which appears is a story about a gambler who in 2006 placed £347,000 on America to win the Ryder Cup.
At the time it was the biggest golf bet in history and, if successful, would have returned £753,000.
But the downside for the punter was that America lost and the big problem for Graham Calvert, from Wearside, is that he was the punter. That, though, was just a fraction of his losses.
He began gambling at the end of 2005 and it wasn't just the odd fiver on the horses.
He says he didn't get a buzz out of bets of tens or hundreds of pounds. He wanted to gamble thousands.
At one stage he placed up to 20 bets a day at £30,000 a punt. But, by his own admission, in what he describes as "rare moments of clarity", he realised it was all getting out of hand and so excluded himself from a number of bookmakers.
Some of them wouldn't let him bet again while others only allowed him maximum bets of a few hundred pounds. But Mr Calvert was a big time gambler so he went in search of other bookmakers to take on his bets.
So, in May 2006, he opened an account with William Hill - one of the best known bookies in the UK.
He says up until that point he had been reluctant to gamble with them because they owned the track where he raced his dogs.
After placing some big bets he closed that account after just a few days, although he chose to re-open it two weeks later.
About a week later, after more bets totalling nearly £300,000 pounds, he closed it again and this is when he was offered what's known as "self exclusion".
This, his lawyers say, is a facility provided by bookmakers to help gambling addicts break free of their addiction.
The BBC has obtained a transcript of the conversation between Mr Calvert and a team leader at William Hill.

J: "Hi Mr Calvert , you're through to John, team leader here. I understand you want to close the account?"
GC: "Yes please, yeah."
J : "Can you tell me why that is please?"
GC: "'Cos it's just far too easy to gamble."
J: "Right, so do you want to be self-excluded at this point then? Which means you will not be able to open the account with us again within the next six months?"
GC: "That's right, aye."
Graham Calvert is claiming William Hill was negligent
J: "Right, well, what I'll do is I'll pass on all the relevant information."
GC: "Right."
J: "The account will now be closed, you will not be able to open it within the next six months."
After a discussion about returning the remaining funds in the account to Mr Calvert, he's told by J: "But the money will be returned to your account and the account will now be closed for the next six months.
"You will not be allowed to open it under any circumstances. You will not be allowed to bet over the phone with William Hill."

But two months later, Mr Calvert did start betting with William Hill again by opening a new account in his own name.
It was through this account that he placed the huge bet on the Ryder Cup.
His downward spiral continued and ended up going into William Hill branches with sacks full of cash, using up all his savings and borrowing more than £1m from business associates.
By the time he stopped gambling with William Hill he had made a net loss of just under £2.1m, the amount he is now claiming against them in a High Court case due to start next week.
Regardless of Mr Calvert's big time gambling past his legal team claim that William Hill were negligent in allowing him to continue to gamble after agreeing that he would be self-excluded and that they should be held responsible for the consequences.
But of course there are two sides to the story. William Hill are strongly contesting the claims.
They argue that any individual choosing to place a bet does so as a matter of their own voluntary choice.
The case is likely to take a long look at the issue of duty of care. Where does the responsibility of both the gambler and the bookmaker start and finish?
It will be for the court to establish exactly how and why Mr Calvert resumed betting and whether William Hill can be held legally liable for his behaviour.

[mrmuzeman]

I hope he doesnt win the case. He deserves to lose the money 100%. If he wins the case it just rewards stupid behaviour and he wont learn his lesson either.

Besides he didnt even reopen the same account so they kept their word as he set up a whole new one. Theyre not his mother. If this results in banning names from opening accounts (so Mr Calvert cannot open an existing or new account) then all the better for other addictsbut he still doesnt deserve reimbursement.

[all_funkt_up]

Interesting one here and I side with the gambling addict I am afraid.

Bookies introduced the self exclusion as part of their duty of care towards addicts. Whats the point in having it if they then just overlook it when you want to start betting again. There is an element of personal responsibility for sure - but here you have a man who said "help, I cant control my betting" and they ignored their own policies and let him open an account again.

[rcgills]

The distinction needs to be made though between bets he placed online and those he placed in their shop. They had a duty to stop him gambling with them online, but how were they supposed to know that the random bloke walking into one of their shops with bags of cash had chosen to close his account online?

[Tom Sawyer]

if your addicted to gambling you will get a bet somewhere, same as your addicted to anything you will always find a way , if it was not hills it would have been somewhere else.

[AnothrSpacecat]

you can be sure that william hills will have a team of lawyers that will rip this guy to shreds

[crowie]

Probably just opened a 2nd Hills account to get a freebie £50 bet..........

[mrmuzeman]

Originally Posted by all_funkt_up

Interesting one here and I side with the gambling addict I am afraid.

Bookies introduced the self exclusion as part of their duty of care towards addicts. Whats the point in having it if they then just overlook it when you want to start betting again. There is an element of personal responsibility for sure - but here you have a man who said "help, I cant control my betting" and they ignored their own policies and let him open an account again.

Get rid of your internet or whole computer and you wont be able to bet online, its not rocket science.

You can be sure if hed won the massive ryder cup bet he wouldnt be thinking ooh they shouldnt have let me do that, ill give my 400k profit straight back. So it works both ways. Its like buying a tele and theres absolutely nothing wrong with it whatsoever but you want to keep the tele and have a refund as well.

I think hes just looking for someone to blame other than himself, thats my opinion.

[rcgills]

Originally Posted by mrmuzeman

Get rid of your internet or whole computer and you wont be able to bet online, its not rocket science.

I can see both sides of the argument on this story to a certain extent, but don't agree with your point above. He might need the computer and the internet for work.

It's like saying that an alcoholic should stop going into the town centre. Never mind the fact that he needs to go there to do his shopping, there are pubs there too. Or telling a cocaine addict to chop his nose off and he won't be able to snort it any more.

[mrmuzeman]

He might need the computer and the internet for work.

And he might not. It said he was a dog trainer in the original post as well. It makes perfect sense to get rid of your computer if youre losing all the money you own by using it. Id say that was priority number 1 in solving the problem regardless of any other factors.

Regardless of the whys and ifs and buts, I think people should be held responsible for their actions. I cant honestly believe if William Hill had managed to ban him he wouldnt have just spunked his money off at a different bookie hed never joined before anyway. This is just a get out clause.

It reminds me of those stories about people who tried to sue McDonalds for getting fat. The fact that William Hill provide any preventative measures at all is more than other places do such as pubs with alcoholics etc. So they shouldnt be punished for providing some level of protection rather than none.

[rcgills]

Originally Posted by mrmuzeman

And he might not. It said he was a dog trainer in the original post as well. It makes perfect sense to get rid of your computer if youre losing all the money you own by using it.

Well if you're going to look at it from that point of view then he'd have been better off getting rid of his credit card than he would the computer.

[ONEDUNME]

Run an internet search for the words "Ryder Cup punter" and one of the first items which appears is a story about a gambler who in 2006 placed £347,000 on America to win the Ryder Cup.

Well, actually, no it wasn't but that's the sort of sloppy comment I'd expect from the BBC website to honest.

As for the gambler, he's a complete cock and deserves everything he gets. I'd say that the William Hill lawyers would make mincemeat of the guy if it wasn't for the fact that their case could probably be won by a twelve year old.

The gamcare type exclusion thing will no doubt be voluntary and they will have terms and conditions to cover themselves for eventualities such as these.

If he had been allowed to use the account that he'd excluded that I could see a case for his argument but as it was, the fact that he used deceit the bypass the banning of that account and create another one makes him a loser in every sense of the word.

There are warnings on nearly all bookies sites and leaflets in shops etc to try to help you identify if you have a problem and pointyou in the right direction towards help.

Nobody can help you if you choose not to be helped.

I'll end my rant with a quote from the William Hill website regarding exclusion.

Whilst most customers are able to enjoy their gambling, William Hill recognises that for a very small number of customers gambling ceases to be fun. For those customers who wish to restrict their gambling, William Hill provides a self-exclusion facility enabling customers to close their account or accounts for a minimum period of six months up to five years as requested.

The point of my highlight being that they didn't allow him to place bets on the account that had been excluded but on a different account. In fact, this makes their case even stronger because it's not as if the guy wasn't aware that he had a problem because this had become obvious by his previous self exclusion and they will argue that it was entirely within his power to exclude himself from this second account.

If the sums were not so big I'd have said they'd have chucked him a few quid as a sweetener out of court. As it is, they can't afford to lose a test case like this and they'll just paste the cock.

[Parahandy]

If the guy had been walking out with much bigger sacks of cash than he came in with, Hill would soon have found a way of stopping him betting in their shops. Same story online inasmuch as big winners will either have their accounts closed or have the size of their bets severely restricted.

I wouldn't altogether write off the guy's chances of winning. People have successfully sued big organisations, for example people with lung cancer and associated medical conditions have won mega lawsuits filed against the big tobacco companies in the US.

Litigation is an industry growing at a phenomenal rate and a lot of unlikely winners continue to emerge. Personally I'd love to see Hill being turned over in this one for the reason above re them being happy top take any amount of cash from serial losers but quickly curtailing the bets of habitual winners.

[ONEDUNME]

That's true.

Effectively, he'd be relying on picking up a judge who wasn't too savvy with the world of gambling in order to get any sympathy but that could well happen.

Either way, taking on board your point Para that the bookies are quick to ditch habitual winners, they still took on this bet and would have been liable to pay out had it lost. I never thought I'd ever side with the bookies but I'm beginning to hate this bloke with a vengance.

If he'd have chosen illegal drugs to spend his money on and ruin his life he would have had no comeback in a court of law.

I hope he dies in agony.

[mrmuzeman]

Me and ODM are singing from the same kinda hymn sheet here. ODM's hymn sheet is in bold type and contains a lot more swearing/violence than mine but the song is the same. Kind of like a rap cover