Responsible Gambling

Last updated: 10 August 2026

Gambling should be entertainment you can afford. It is not a way to make money, and it is not a
solution to financial difficulty. This page explains how to keep it in proportion and where to get
help if it stops being fun.

The rules worth keeping

• Set a budget before you start, not during. Decide what you can afford to lose,
  and treat it as the cost of an evening’s entertainment.
• Never chase losses. Trying to win back what you have lost is the single most
  common way a manageable session becomes an unmanageable one.
• Set a time limit as well as a money limit. Long sessions erode judgement.
• Do not gamble to escape. Stress, low mood, loneliness and boredom are poor
  reasons to play.
• Do not gamble with borrowed money, and never with money set aside for rent,
  bills, food or family.
• Avoid alcohol and drugs while playing. Both reliably make decisions worse.
• Understand the maths. Every game on this site has a return-to-player figure
  below 100%. Over time, the game keeps a percentage of everything staked. There is no strategy that
  changes that.

Warning signs

Consider stopping and seeking advice if any of these are true:

• You are spending more time or money gambling than you intended, repeatedly.
• You have lied to anyone about how much you gamble.
• You have borrowed money, sold possessions or missed bills to gamble.
• You feel restless or irritable when you try to cut down.
• Gambling is affecting your work, studies, sleep, mood or relationships.
• You gamble to relieve anxiety or to recover losses.

Tools your operator must offer

Licensed casinos are required to give you control tools. Look for them in your account settings:

• Deposit limits — daily, weekly or monthly caps you set in advance.
• Loss and wager limits — ceilings on what you can lose or stake.
• Session reminders and time limits.
• Time-out — a short cooling-off period, typically 24 hours to six weeks.
• Self-exclusion — a longer block, usually six months or more, which the
  operator must enforce.

Multi-operator self-exclusion

Self-excluding from one casino only covers that casino. National schemes block you across many
operators at once:

• GAMSTOP (United Kingdom) — a free service that blocks you from all
  online operators licensed in Great Britain for six months, one year or five years:
  gamstop.co.uk
• Many other countries operate equivalent national registers. Your national regulator’s website
  will name the scheme that applies where you live.

Where to get help

These organisations are independent of us and of any casino. Their help is free and
confidential.

Protecting children

If you share a device, filtering software can block gambling content for other users. Widely used
options include Net Nanny, Qustodio and CyberPatrol. Keep your casino account credentials private
and log out when you finish.

Our position

We review slot games and casinos, and we are paid commission when readers sign up — see our
Affiliate Disclosure. That is exactly why
we publish the return-to-player figure on every review, refuse to print unverified numbers, and say
when a game is a poor deal compared with its siblings. We would rather you play informed, or not at
all, than play on a false impression.

Related: Privacy Policy · Terms & Conditions · Cookie Policy · Responsible Gambling · Affiliate Disclosure · How We Rate