Responsible gambling

The tools that sit on the account

We list these first because they are the ones that work without asking anybody’s permission. A licensed operator has to offer them, and each one does something specific:

• Deposit limits. A ceiling per day, week or month. Lowering one takes effect straight away; raising one does not, and a licensee may not apply an increase until the reader has confirmed it after a cooling-off period.
• Time-out. A short close on the account — a day, a week, up to six weeks — after which it reopens by itself.
• Self-exclusion with one operator. A minimum of six months, during which that operator must close the account, stop marketing to the reader and refuse a new registration.
• Reality checks. A reminder on screen at a chosen interval, showing how long the session has run.

Deposit limits behave differently from one device to another often enough to be worth its own page: what a limit follows and what it does not.

One registration, every operator

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator self-exclusion scheme for Great Britain. One registration blocks the reader’s accounts with every operator licensed to serve GB customers, for six months, one year or five years, and the duty to enforce it sits on the operator under provision 3.5.5 of the licence conditions and codes of practice — not on the reader, and not on the phone.

That last part is the one most often misread. The scheme blocks accounts, not devices: an app stays installed and a browser keeps opening pages. What stops is access to the account. The detail, on an iPhone specifically, is on what GAMSTOP blocks and what it does not.

Register with GAMSTOP

Free, independent help

None of the services below is run by this site or by any operator listed on it, none of them charges, and none of them needs an account with anybody.

• GamCare — free, confidential support and the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133, open every day of the year.
• BeGambleAware — advice, a self-assessment and a directory of local treatment.
• GAMSTOP — the national self-exclusion scheme described above.

The signs worth naming

Gambling stops being a game when the money stops being spare: when a stake is covered by a card, a loan or a wage that is needed elsewhere, when a session runs longer than it was meant to and the next one is set against what the last one cost, when the amount gets hidden from the people nearby. Any one of those is a reason to use a tool above today rather than at the weekend.

Nobody has to be at that point to use them. A deposit limit set while things are fine is the cheapest of all of them, and it is the one tool that costs nothing to try.