Responsible gambling for UK players
Free help for UK players
If gambling is making life harder, call a helpline before you play again. For England and Scotland, the National Gambling Helpline is 0808 8020 133. For Wales, the NHS Wales Helpline is 0808 2819 265.
GambleAware says these support services are available only to Great Britain residents. We have captured no Northern Ireland help line, so we state none.
Gamstop, the scheme explained further down, and GambleAware show no phone number on the pages we read, so use their websites.
Keep it in proportion
Set a deposit limit before your first deposit. A deposit limit caps how much you can pay in over a day, a week or a month, and a loss limit caps how much you can lose over a period. Choose the amount from money you can afford to lose, never from rent, bills or food, and think of it in pounds rather than in coins, so you can see what you are really spending.
Take breaks, and stop when you notice you are chasing a loss or playing to change your mood. A time-out or a session reminder, where a casino offers one, makes the break happen without a decision each time. If you are playing for longer than you planned, stop for the day.
The tools each casino states are its own, set out in its terms, on its responsible gambling page or in its account settings: limits on deposits and losses, time-outs, session reminders and its own self-exclusion are examples. Which of them a casino offers, and at what amounts, is for that casino to state, and we print no casino's figures on this page. Switch them on from the first day, and if you cannot find a tool, ask the casino's support before you deposit. How we check crypto casinos covers what our team checks on each casino. For a single casino, see our crypto casino reviews.
Crypto casinos and self-exclusion
If you want to stop gambling, register with Gamstop. Its page says that once you register with Gamstop Online you will be “blocked from accessing gambling websites and apps licensed in Great Britain.”
Gamstop therefore covers sites with a British licence. A casino licensed elsewhere is never a way around a self-exclusion, and the same goes for a sister site of a casino you have excluded yourself from. We cannot tell you that Gamstop blocks a casino licensed elsewhere, so do not rely on it to.
The Gambling Commission says each gambling business must run its own self-exclusion arrangements. So ask every casino you use to set up its own self-exclusion, and turn to the help services above if you need support to keep to it.
Adults only
This page is for adults. The Gambling Commission’s page on gambling and young people says: “In most cases, the minimum legal age for gambling in Great Britain is 18.” It applies to online gambling.
If you share a phone, tablet or computer, keep casino and wallet logins on your own profile, and do not let a browser save them where others can use them. Look in the device's settings, and in your internet provider's or router's settings, for parental or content controls that can block gambling sites, and keep the passcode to them private. We name no blocking program on this page.
Sources
- Chain Casino UK's team tests of each casino's offering
- gambleaware.org Used for help services. One page read.
- gamstop.co.uk Used for help services. One page read.