Gambling “whale” Lester Hui is defending himself against a claim of almost £600,000 by an exclusive Mayfair casino in London. Hui maintains that Aspinall’s Clubs Ltd helped him get “blackout drunk” in order to help him lose more than half a million Pounds playing double chance baccarat at Aspinall’s casino at Curzon Street.

Hui claims the casino kept bringing him drinks of Moutai, a particular style of baijiu, a distilled Chinese liquor that is crafted in the town of Maotai in China’s Guizhou province and often referred to as “firewater”.

Claims Failure of Club’s Social Responsibility

Under Gambling Commission rules, Hui maintains that the casino failed to fulfill its social responsibility to him when staff failed to intervene in his self-destructive behavior by continuing to serve him the potent liquor so that he would be likely to lose large sums of money to the house edge and Aspinall’s financial benefit at his expense.

Aspinall’s is having none of it if they can help it and are demanding he pays up the money it says he owes through the gambling contract. The casino contends he remained sober enough to make clear game decisions and drove himself home when he was done gambling.

Aspinall’s is a members-only club that has entertained celebrities and various royalty over the years since opening in the 1960s. The purported gambling debt dates back to early 2016. Hui has reportedly been a member since 1996.

As is usually the case with a game like baccarat, his winnings reportedly fluctuated throughout his gambling session but he ended up in the hole after spending £600,000 in pursuit of wins. When he was done playing he wrote a check for £589,724, representing his spend minus a smaller amount the club owed him from earlier.

However, the check didn’t clear the bank.

Attempted to Settle Out of Court

According to a report in the Mirror, the club has tried on several occasions to help Hui settle the debt out of court but has been involved in the court process since late 2019.

According to Hui, he planned to get drunk and informed staff while also asking them to limit his losses to £30,000 and then got too drunk to know what he was doing while the club allowed him to lose five times his self-imposed limit he claims he asked the club to help him enforce. Being in a state of “blackout” drunkenness, Hui claims he was not legally capable of entering a gambling contract to lose money.

Club barrister, Alexander Robson doubts Hui’s claim of asking for limits and forcefully defends against the main notions put forward by the gambler.

“If Mr. Hui had made any such formal request to limit his gaming to a particular amount, the request would have been recorded and requested.

“Further, if Mr. Hui had said he was going to get drunk, he would not have been permitted to play at all,” said the barrister.

Providing complimentary drinks, enforcing insufficient breaks from the tables, and continuing to serve drinks after he began gambling are claimed as a breach of Aspinall’s social responsibility to its customer.

Source: High roller claims top Mayfair casino plied him with ‘firewater’ as he gambled away £600k, The Mirror, March 13, 2023

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This is why Crown London Aspinalls has now decided to go after one of its high rollers, Lester Hui, who raked up almost £600,000 ($730,000) in gambling debt on the night of February 9, 2016. He has not made any efforts to honor this payment over the past years, prompting the luxury property to settle matters in court.

Hui Seeks to Have Debt from Crown London Aspinalls Dropped

In a lawsuit filed by the property, Aspinalls alleges that Hui signed the casino a check which was ultimately bounced, prompting the property to seek a way to get its money back. Hui, though, has been willing to put up a fight. He argued that Aspinalls had not honored its obligations under the license issued to the property by the UK Gambling Commission.

He alleged that Aspinalls had broken its social responsibility pledge by purposefully getting him drunk all throughout the night while he played double chance baccarat, and continued to spiral further into debt. Hui even named the drink he was served repeatedly, Moutai, which is a preferred brew among Chinese people.

Hui added that the casino went to extreme measures to get him inebriated and ensure his lapse of judgement. Hui’s attorneys, cited by Evening Standard, argue that the casino made no effort to intervene and stop the gamblers from proceeding, despite his state of mind, which they characterized as “blackout drunk.”

The casino had no legal right to these losses, the attorneys argued. The casino said that this was not true. Hui is also contending that he had warned the casino and asked explicitly for his losses to be limited to no more than £30,000 ($36,000). Aspinalls has denied this charge as well.

Aspinalls May Have Broken New Rules, But Not Old Rules

Aspinalls has been caught in litigation in the past, losing a lawsuit over racial discrimination against an employee who said that customers were repeatedly abusive to dealers of color. The present case though remains an ongoing matter. Aspinalls is unlikely to back down and repeatedly denies wrongdoing, but so does Hui who will seek to prove that the club took advantage of his physical and mental state.

Of course, legislation has come a long way since 2016, and in new guidelines issued by the UK Gambling Commission that came into effect in September 2022, the regulator clearly states that the casino should always intervene in those cases when it suspects that a gambler is acting irrationally or not capable of making clear and logical decisions or is clearly playing outside of their means. This means that even if Aspinalls was a little slow to act in 2016, it did not seem to be breaking any rules.

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