Responsible gambling

This site takes no bets. It is a simulation and a set of calculators. But it is about betting on football, which is the sport the industry markets hardest, so this page is here, and it is the most useful page on the site.

If you need help now

• BeGambleAware — Free, confidential advice and support.
• National Gambling Helpline — 0808 8020 133, free, 24 hours a day.
• GAMSTOP — Exclude yourself from all GB licensed sites.
• Gambling Commission — Check whether an operator is licensed.
• Gordon Moody — Residential and online treatment.

The tools you are entitled to

Every operator licensed by the Gambling Commission has to offer these, and has to apply them once you ask. They are in the account settings, not hidden behind customer support.

• Deposit limits — daily, weekly or monthly. A lower limit takes effect immediately; a higher one is delayed and has to be confirmed, which is the whole point of it.
• Reality checks — a message on screen telling you how long you have been playing and what you are up or down.
• Timeouts — a break of a day, a week, a month or six weeks. The account is locked and you cannot talk your way back in early.
• Self-exclusion — at least six months, and the operator must close the account, remove you from marketing and take reasonable steps not to let you open another.

GAMSTOP: all of them at once

GAMSTOP excludes you from every online operator licensed in Great Britain, from one form, for six months, one year or five years. It cannot be undone early. That is not a limitation of the service, it is the service.

Signs worth taking seriously

• Betting more than you planned to, or for longer than you planned to.
• Chasing a loss with a bigger bet, which is the single most reliable warning sign there is.
• Betting with money meant for something else, or borrowing to bet.
• Hiding how much you bet from people close to you.
• Feeling you need to bet to feel right, rather than because you want to.

Two things this site will never do

• Tell you who is going to win. There are no tips on this site and there will not be. The model prices a match it invented, between clubs that do not exist; it knows nothing about any real one.
• Suggest the maths gives you an edge. It does not. Knowing exactly what a bookmaker's margin is tells you what a market costs to enter. It does not tell you anything at all about who wins.

Gambling is entertainment that costs money on average. If it has stopped being entertainment, the helpline number at the top of this page is a better first call than any betting site, including this one.