Play responsibly
Gambling should be entertainment paid for out of money you can afford to lose. That is the whole test. If the money you are staking has another job — rent, food, bills, debt repayments, someone else’s money — then what you are doing is no longer entertainment, whatever it feels like in the moment.
How to recognise a problem
Warning signs include chasing losses, gambling with money meant for something else, hiding it, and gambling to escape low mood. Read those again slowly. Chasing losses means staking more to win back what has gone. Hiding it means deleting history, lying about amounts, or being uneasy about someone seeing your account. Gambling to escape low mood means you reach for it when you feel bad, not when you want a game.
People rarely notice these in themselves at the time. If one or more of them describes your last month, treat that as the answer, not as something to think about later.
What to do first
Use the controls that already exist on the sites you use. Deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion are offered by many licensed operators; using them is routine, not an admission. Set a deposit limit before you next play, not after the next loss. A time-out closes access for a set period. Self-exclusion is the strongest of the three and is the right choice if limits have not held.
Tell one person. Hiding it is both a warning sign and the thing that keeps the problem running, because it removes every outside check on what you are spending.
Where to get help
- Gambling Therapy — international; support in several languages.
- Gamblers Anonymous — international; meetings, in person and online.
Both of the above are international, so they are open to you wherever you are reading this. Local services differ by country, and this site does not list one for yours; a search for the national helpline where you live will find it. A national service can usually arrange counselling, debt advice and self-exclusion schemes that cover several operators at once, which a general site cannot do for you.
If you are in immediate crisis, contact a local emergency service or helpline.
About this page
fidgetsguide.com writes about games and how they work. It does not take deposits, hold accounts or operate self-exclusion, so the controls described here have to be set with the operator you play with, and the help has to come from the services listed above or from the national service where you live.
