A VIP player is suing the Park Lane Casino in Mayfair over an alleged promise to refund a sizable share of his wagers. It’s a promise the casino says it never made and it’s now up to Judge Gavin Mansfield to sort the whole matter out.
At the heart of the dispute is an allegation by Croatian businessman Juste Puharic that the Park Lane Casino offered to refund .09 percent of his wagers, win or lose, when he was done with a marathon gambling session back in May of 2015. This kind of treatment for VIP players is pretty common in land-based casinos and Puharic is every casino’s definition of a whale. And just so no one thinks Puharic is some rink-dink player who couldn’t handle losing, legal filings claim that he wagered £27 million ($35.5 million USD) and won approximately £1.5 million ($1.97 million).
According to a report in the Daily Mail, Puharic was approached by casino hosts working for the Park Lane Casino with an offer to match any play offers he had from competing casinos (which is also not uncommon). But this is where the player and the casino part ways.
In the Park Lane Casino’s version of the story, they only said that they would try to match other offers and that no formal offer was ever tendered. Then, they dropped a little shade on Puharic’s game of choice saying, “Casinos use a variety of incentives to attract customers. The defendant’s position is simply that it never made him this matching offer.’
‘The only incentive offered to roulette players at the Park Lane Club was discretionary free hospitality and commission which could be used as a ‘discount on losses’ but not claimed by a player who came out on top.”
So not only was Puharic a roulette player, but we was a lousy winning roulette player at that. The judge should have a lot of fun with this one.