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Contents
Responsible Gambling Guide
Although gambling can be fun, it does carry certain risks. Most people understand these risks and can manage them effectively. However, some people need a little help, which is why we have written this responsible gambling guide. We believe that online gambling should be fun, betting sites believe it should be fun, and it should remain this way for as long as people continue to engage in this activity. On that note, we have some specific advice for people who want to ensure that they remain in control. All of this is detailed below.
Deposit Limits
The first port of call for our responsible gambling guide is deposit limits. Almost all gambling sites have started to incorporate deposit limits into their offerings. Basically, you can establish deposit limits within the settings of your account. These can be set on a daily, weekly, or even a monthly basis. For example, if you know that you cannot afford to spend more than £10 per week on gambling, you could set this as a limit. Of course, the numbers involved here will be different for each person.
And as the old saying goes in gambling, you should never be spending more than you are prepared to lose. This should definitely be applied when setting your deposit limits. Although if you do want to change these limits at any time, you can also do so in the settings. There will be a slight delay concerning when you set the limit and when it comes into effect, however. Again, this is to encourage responsible gambling and prevent rash decisions.
Session Limits
Now that we have covered deposit limits, it brings us nicely onto the next set of limits you can create. As you can see from the title, we are talking about session limits here. These are actually time limits instead of monetary limits. For example, you could easily log in to your online account right now and set a 1-hour session limit. When you are approaching this limit, you will be notified by the betting website. Many sites will even produce an on-screen pop-up where you can click to log out of your account. Some would argue that these are not quite as effective as deposit limits, but they still serve as a vital reminder.
After all, one of the issues with gambling is that people can forget how much time they have committed to it. So when you receive these session limits, you know exactly how long you have been gambling for.
Account History
Checking out your account history is another way of monitoring your gambling habits. This part of our responsible gambling guide requires that you actually take some action yourself. You can’t really set any limits concerning your account history. You can, however, think of this task as a bit of an auditing process. When you go into your account history, you will see all of the bets that you have made for any specified time frame. This allows you to see how much you have bet, what you have been betting on, and if there have ever been times where you have gambled more than you should have. This is where the auditing description comes into view.
The process allows you to assess whether you really are keeping control of your gambling habits or not. And there is no hiding from any minor details!
Self Evaluation
Believe it or not, many responsible gambling resources have developed a self-evaluation quiz that you can take. These quizzes are absolutely free for you to use, and they’re actually pretty effective at showing you what impact gambling is having in your life. And it isn’t just third party gambling resources that you can do these tests on either. Since individual betting sites tend to promote responsible gambling, they have started to incorporate these tests into their own platforms. There will be links to such tests while you are logged into your account.
Don’t worry, these tests do not take very long to complete. And while this might not create direct restrictions on your betting activities, it does help to paint a picture. So please do not glance past or ignore this section of our responsible gambling guide.
Self Exclusion
If you ever feel like things are getting a little bit beyond your control, this is the most effective solution. All betting sites allow you to perform something known as a self-exclusion. This is where you basically lock yourself out of your betting accounts, and you will not be able to access your account for a predetermined length of time. This can sometimes be a matter of months, but for some people, they prefer to set a self-exclusion timeframe of up to one year. It all depends on your personal circumstances. but as you can see, this is very much the most drastic of actions that can be taken for responsible gambling.
So for that reason, we would advise that you think carefully as to whether such critical action needs to be taken or not.
Budgeting Help
Last but not least, you might want to consider some budgeting help. This will highlight exactly how much money you are spending on gambling and whether this is in line with what you can actually afford. Now, there are two ways in which you can actually monitor your budgeting. The first way is to simply keep an individual log, whether on paper or on a spreadsheet. This log should involve how much money you are spending on gambling, but it should also include how much money you spend on other essentials. That’s why the log needs to include things such as rent and bills.
The other option is to use budgeting tools that some betting sites have started to include. These are automatic calculators where you simply input the information and then receive an answer. The beauty of doing things this way is that you get an exact picture of whether you are truly gambling responsibly or not.
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