Responsible Gaming Tools: A Guidebook for Casino Players

The numbers speak for themselves – gaming keeps expanding. The most conservative estimates for last year set the entire market size at over 230 billion US dollars.

And yet, while the industry's revenue may even be underreported, so are gambling addiction figures. Experts go even further as to assert the rates of gambling addiction are nine times higher than have been thought previously. To help players like you engage in gambling at no cost to your financial and emotional well-being, the top new casino sites in Africa, such as https://africacasinohub.com/, apply so-called responsible gambling practices.

This short manual is meant to give you correct information on gambling addiction, how to resist it, and tools to obtain from gambling operators.

Signs of problem gambling

Recognizing the problem is the first step towards overcoming it. Problem gambling differs not a bit from other addictions in that respect. That is to stay, persons involved in it typically cannot acknowledge the fact about their situation.

To help you determine whether you are yourself a gambling addict, you must critically assess your habits and see whether you:

• Don't know how to stop even when you feel that you possess willpower.
• Increase the amount of your bets in order to experience the rush of adrenaline.
• Begin planning your day around gambling and prioritizing the activity of gambling above all else.
• Turn to gambling to escape real-life problems or relieve negative feelings.
• Hide the extent of your gambling from your family and friends.
• Risk relationships and work opportunities due to gambling.
• Have experienced trouble trying to cut back or stop gambling.
• Feeling restless or agitated when you’re unable to gamble for a prolonged period of time.
• Resort to other problematic practices to get money for gambling.

If you believe that some or all of the above are representative of your actions, then you could be a victim of a compulsive gaming disorder. Similar to any addiction, there may be times when you feel like you have everything under control, but don't fool yourself, this tranquility will not last.

Let's walk through the most successful tools, one by one.

Limits

Some of the most used responsible gambling tools are account limitations of the player. They come in different types and even overlap:

• Deposit limits – limit how much money one funds on a betting site. Players can set their daily, weekly or monthly deposit limits.
• Time limits – limit how long time is spent on a gambling site.
• Wagering limits – limit how much money one bets.
• Loss limits – automatically log you out of your account and/or gets you blocked from playing once you have surpassed a particular number.

Time-out sessions / Self-exclusion

With time-out sessions, you take a break from accessing your account whenever you sense that things are getting too heated (e.g., you sense you are on a losing spiral when you lose a few times). In short, time-out sessions are an opportunity to take a break from gambling for some time and calm your head.

Self-assessment

Most casinos provide self-assessment to enable you to determine how well you handle your gambling compulsions.

The questions tend to give you a number of descriptive sentences and then ask you to rate how relevant they are to your case. For example, you are given the sentence "Sometimes I lose track of time when gambling", and you rate it from 1 to 10. Then you do it with all of the questions, and then you get your final evaluation explaining whether you are showing signs of problem gambling or not.

The test is free, only a few minutes to complete and can be done at any time.

Player history

Player history is itself not a responsible gambling resource but it is still an important tool in preventing addiction. Player history enables you to track all transactions, bets and wagers, deposits made at a particular casino.

It is a source of factual information which allows you to establish how much you are engaged in gambling and whether it's time to stop.

Time alert

One of the more glaring issues with gambling on the internet is that it's easy to get caught in. In an attempt to help avoid playing for an extended period of time, players can make time alerts. These are reminders that pop up every time your gaming session has gone on for a long time.

Reminders about time can also include pertinent financial data such as how the changes to your balance have been since you checked it last. While a flash reminder is simple to ignore, being faced with the harsh reality of your gambling decisions is an agreeable wake-up call reminding players not to forget their time.

Gamban

Gamban is a software company that focuses on gambling-blocking applications. With Gamban, you can automatically block access to all of the casino and bettings websites that conduct monetary transactions.

Gamban and similar apps need to be used as a last resort when no other responsible gambling utility has an impact.

Whereas blocking casino web sites may help you effectively control your compulsion to gamble, now you need to aggressively explore the necessary psychological reasons for these urges. There are many mental health professionals who are ready to help you overcome this issue, as well as having access to a number of responsible gambling resources (see below).

Conclusion

Among the criticisms leveled against responsible gambling instruments is that they are very intrusive and may be slightly disruptive to non-at-risk gamblers. In the long run, however, they help make the environment safer and more attractive to new and return clients.

On its own, having responsible gambling instruments on the site of a casino has been found to reduce stress among gamblers and make them feel more likely to remain with this gambling site. Responsible gambling instruments serve as a stamp of authenticity.

Most of the responsible gambling tools are optional, making it simple for recreational players to switch them off and play to their hearts' delight. This is an advantage and disadvantage at the same time because you as a player must do your homework and learn when to trust these tools.