Responsible Gambling

Tools a regulated operator should offer

These are requirements, not favours. If you cannot find them in an account, that is itself a reason to question the operator.

• Deposit limits — daily, weekly or monthly caps you set yourself. Increases are subject to a cooling-off period; decreases take effect immediately.
• Reality checks — periodic reminders of how long a session has run.
• Time-out — a short break, typically from 24 hours up to six weeks.
• Self-exclusion — blocking access for a minimum of six months. It cannot be reversed early.

Signs worth taking seriously

None of these require a crisis to be worth acting on. Setting a limit early is far easier than unwinding a problem later.

• Gambling with money set aside for something else.
• Chasing losses, or staking more to recover an earlier loss.
• Borrowing money to gamble, or hiding how much has been staked.
• Gambling to escape stress, low mood or boredom.
• Feeling unable to stop once a session has started.

Practical steps

• Set a deposit limit before you play, not during a session.
• Decide the amount you are willing to lose, and treat it as the cost of the entertainment.
• Do not gamble while drinking, upset, or trying to recover a loss.
• Take breaks. Use reality checks rather than relying on noticing the time.
• Use gambling-block features offered by your bank on your debit card.

Where to get free, independent help

Support in Canada is provincial rather than national. Every province we cover runs a free, confidential line open 24 hours a day, and the numbers are at the foot of every page on this site. They are independent of gambling operators and of us.

Self-exclusion is provincial too, and it is important to understand its limit: registering excludes you from your province's own system, not from sites licensed outside Canada. If offshore sites are part of the problem, provincial self-exclusion will not reach them, and a bank-level gambling block or device blocking software is the layer that does.

If someone else's gambling is affecting you, all three support family members and friends too, not only the person gambling.

• National Gambling Helpline — 0808 8020 133, free and confidential, 24 hours a day.
• Responsible Gambling Council (responsiblegambling.org) — an independent charity with a directory of support in every province.
• GameSense (gamesense.com) — plain explanations of how the games actually work, including the maths people most often get wrong.
• Your provincial line — listed at the foot of every page, free and confidential, 24 hours a day.
• Your bank — several Canadian banks and card issuers can block gambling transactions, and it works at the card level rather than per site.

A note on what this site is

We are a comparison publisher and we are paid commission by some of the operators we list. That is disclosed on every page that links to one. The support services above are not: we have no relationship with them, and we receive nothing if you contact them.