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Responsible gambling

The risks, the controls that exist, and verified support organisations. If gambling has stopped being a choice, help is free and confidential.

Last updated September 21, 2026

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Gambling costs money. Every product on this site is designed so that, over time, the operator keeps a proportion of everything staked. That proportion is not a fee you can avoid with skill or timing — it is built into the price of each bet. Treat anything you stake as the cost of the entertainment, not as an investment.

Two things follow from that:

  • Only stake what you would be content to lose entirely.
  • Never borrow to gamble, and never gamble to recover a loss. Chasing is the single most reliable route from an expensive evening to a serious problem.

Signs worth taking seriously

Gambling stops being recreational gradually rather than suddenly. The things people notice first, usually in hindsight:

  • Staking more than intended, or more often than intended.
  • Gambling to win back losses.
  • Hiding the amount, the time, or the fact of it from people close to you.
  • Borrowing, selling things, or using money meant for something else.
  • Restlessness or irritability when trying to cut down.
  • Continuing after it has already damaged a relationship, a job or your finances.

Recognising one of these is not a diagnosis. It is a reason to use the controls below, and a reason to talk to someone who does this for a living.

The controls that exist

Most licensed operators offer these, and in many markets they are required to. Their usefulness varies a great deal:

  • Deposit limits. The strongest everyday tool, because it acts before money reaches the account. Reductions apply immediately; increases are normally delayed by a cooling-off period. Set one when you open an account.
  • Loss and stake limits. Useful, but they act after the money is in.
  • Reality checks and session timers. A prompt showing elapsed time and net position. Easily dismissed, but it turns an unmeasured stretch into a number.
  • Time-outs. A short lock — usually 24 hours to six weeks — that cannot be lifted early.
  • Self-exclusion. A long, binding closure of the account.

Outside the gambling industry: many banks offer a gambling block on card transactions, often with a delay before it can be lifted, and blocking software can prevent access at the device level.

National self-exclusion registers

A national register closes every operator licensed in that market at once, rather than one at a time:

  • GAMSTOP — Great Britain. Free, and prevents a UK resident from using accounts with operators licensed in Great Britain. Periods of six months, one year or five years.
  • Cruks — the Netherlands. The Centraal Register Uitsluiting Kansspelen; Dutch-licensed operators must check it before play, and registration lasts a minimum of six months.
  • OASIS — Germany. The central player-blocking system under the interstate gambling treaty.
  • Spelpaus.se — Sweden. Operated by the Swedish Gambling Authority; durations from ten days to indefinite, and an exclusion cannot be cancelled or shortened before its end date.

An important limit: a national register covers only operators licensed in that country. Sites that advertise themselves as being outside one of these schemes are advertising the absence of a protection, and we do not list them.

Support organisations

The organisations below were checked against their own websites on the date shown on this page. Where we have not verified a service for a country, we say so rather than printing a number we have not checked.

If you are worried about someone else

Most of the helplines above also take calls from family members, and several run dedicated services for them. You do not need the person's permission to ask for advice, and you do not need to have a plan before you call.

Under-age gambling

The minimum age shown on this site is the higher of our site-wide minimum and the operator's own requirement. Gambling below the legal age in your country is unlawful and a licensing failure for the operator. Parental control software can block gambling sites at the device level; the support organisations above can advise on the options.