Responsible Gambling

Gambling is entertainment, not income

Every casino game is built with a mathematical edge in favour of the house, and that edge does not go away over time — it compounds. Played well, gambling is a paid entertainment: you buy some hours of a game the way you would buy a cinema ticket, and the price is what you lose. Treated as a way to make money, or to recover money already lost, it reliably costs far more than it returns. The distinction between those two framings is the single most useful thing on this page.

Practical rules that work

Decide what a session costs before you start and treat that amount as spent the moment you deposit. Set a time limit as well as a money limit, because losing track of time is what turns a short session into a long one. Never deposit again after losing the first amount. Do not gamble with money set aside for rent, bills or food, and never with borrowed money. Do not play while drinking, upset, or trying to fix a bad day. And take the win as well as the loss: leaving while ahead is a skill, not luck.

Warning signs

Certain patterns show up long before a serious problem does. Spending more than intended, or longer than intended, repeatedly. Chasing losses with bigger stakes to get back to even. Hiding how much you play from people close to you. Borrowing to gamble, or gambling with money meant for something else. Feeling restless or irritable when you cannot play. Losing interest in things that used to matter. One of these is worth noticing; several together are worth acting on now rather than later.

Tools available in your account

The tools below are free, take effect immediately and can be tightened whenever you want. Relaxing a limit takes longer on purpose — that cooling-off delay is the feature, not a bug, and it exists so that a decision made calmly cannot be undone in the middle of a bad session.

Time out and self-exclusion

A time out is a short break: pick a period from 24 hours to six weeks and the account is locked until it ends. Self-exclusion is the serious option — six months at minimum, often longer, and it cannot be lifted early no matter who you ask or what reason you give. Marketing stops as well as access. If you are weighing the two, the honest test is simple: if you are asking whether you need self-exclusion, a time out is almost certainly not enough.

Protecting people under 18

Gambling by anyone under 18 is illegal and operators verify age at registration. If children use your devices, keep account passwords private, do not save them in a shared browser, and consider filtering software such as Gamban, GamBlock or Net Nanny, which blocks gambling sites at device level.

Where to get free, confidential help

Support is free, confidential and available whether or not you are ready to stop. GamCare runs a 24-hour helpline and live chat. Gambling Therapy offers online support in many languages. BeGambleAware provides self-assessment tools and can put you in touch with local treatment. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer meetings in most countries, in person and online. Gambling problems respond well to help, and they respond better the earlier you ask — talking to one person today is worth more than any tool on this page.

Helplines and organisations

For friends and family

Living with someone else's gambling is its own burden, and the same organisations support you too — GamCare and Gambling Therapy both run services specifically for family members. Two things help more than anything else: do not pay off gambling debts, because it removes the consequence that prompts change, and do not make it a secret you keep together. Ask for support on your own behalf, not only theirs.