Safer gambling

• Betting more than you planned, or more than you can afford to lose
• Chasing losses with bigger bets to get back to even
• Borrowing money, or selling things, to keep betting
• Hiding how much you bet from people close to you
• Betting to escape stress, boredom or low mood
• Feeling anxious, irritable or guilty about betting

Any one of these on its own is worth a pause. Several together is worth talking to someone about.

You do not have to set any of these. If you do, you set the amount and the period, and we enforce it — a deposit over your limit is returned to you, and a bet that would take you past a loss limit is refused.

• Deposit limits — a cap on what you pay in per day, week or month.
• Loss limits — a cap on how far down you can be over the same periods.

Lowering a limit, or setting your first one, applies immediately. Raising or removing one takes seven days, and your existing limit holds for all of it. That is deliberate: the moment you most want a limit lifted is the moment it is doing its job.

Set your limits

• Take a break — 7, 14 or 31 days.
• Self-exclusion — 3 months, 6 months, a year, or permanently.

Both stop new bets and nothing else. Bets you have already placed stay live and settle as normal, and your balance stays in your account — contact us whenever you want it and we will refund what is outstanding. Being stopped from betting does not mean losing money you already hold.

Neither can be shortened or lifted early, by you or by us. That is what makes them worth having, and we will confirm you understand it before either one starts.

Take a break or self-exclude

Your activity statement shows what you have staked, won and lost over the last month, three months, year, or since you opened the account. It leads with the one number that matters — whether you are up or down — and it is built from your own account record, not an estimate.

See my activity

• The odds are set so that, over time, the book wins. That is what a book is. Individual bets can go either way; the direction over thousands of them does not.
• A losing run is not "due" to end. Results do not remember what came before them.
• Knowing a sport well does not reverse the margin. It narrows it.
• Money already lost is gone. Staking more to recover it is how a bad day becomes a bad year.

Gambling Help Online supports family and friends, not just people betting. You do not need the person's permission to call.

If you believe someone should not be betting with us, contact us. We can close or restrict an account, and we will not tell them who asked.