Gambler loses again as high court judge rules his £2m loss was NOT the bookmakers' fault

A compulsive gambler who blamed the bookies for letting him lose millions was unlucky again yesterday - in court.

Graham Calvert lost his battle to force William Hill to pay him back £2million he frittered away on dog racing, horses, football and golf.

Mr Calvert, 28 and a greyhound trainer, claimed the firm ignored his pleas to bar him from its telephone betting service.

But a High Court judge ruled that although Hill's should have refused to let him bet, he would have eventually brought about his own financial ruin by finding other ways to gamble.

Even now, despite facing a bill for £335,500 in costs, he might have one final flutter with the legal system as he was given permission to appeal.

Mr Calvert, who claimed to earn £30,000 a month from greyhound racing, says he told the firm he was addicted to gambling and twice pleaded for his accounts to be closed under Hill's self-exclusion policy.

Yet he was allowed, in one bet alone, to lose £347,000 when he backed the U.S. to win the Ryder Cup in 2006.

The huge losses led to him being divorced by his wife Adele, 25, mother of his two daughters. He is now penniless and will fund a possible legal challenge with a loan from a friend.

Mr Justice Briggs agreed that William Hill did agree to exclude Mr Calvert from telephone gambling but failed to take reasonable steps to carry out the exclusion.

But he said that pathological gambling would still probably have led to Mr Calvert's financial ruin, though perhaps over a longer period of time.

Mr Justice Briggs, in a summary of his ruling, said: "William Hill's failure to take reasonable care to exclude him from telephone gambling ... did not therefore cause Mr Calvert any measurable financial or other loss."

Mr Calvert sued William Hill after he said he lost not only money but also his wife, health and livelihood.

Anneliese Day, who represented the 28-year-old greyhound trainer told the judge at a hearing last month that William Hill should be held liable because it failed to operate its own policy.

She said at the time that Mr Calvert, from Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear, was hoping to establish in law for the first time that bookies do owe a duty of care in such circumstances.

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She told the hearing that the scale of her client's gambling had been "staggering", with periods of mania when he placed huge multiple bets in the space of a few hours.

He lost around £347,000 in one bet alone when he backed the US to win the 2006 Ryder Cup.

Miss Day said her client, who ended up borrowing money to fund his habit, was an accomplished greyhound trainer who ran the family business from a farm in County Durham.

He was once "comfortably well-off" and had been involved in gambling for most of his life.

"The claimant's descent from betting being a hobby to betting being a disorder appears to have commenced when he began betting by telephone."

Mr Calvert began "staking larger and larger sums of money with increasing frequency and decreasing regard for the consequences".