Play while it stays fun, and stop when it does not

All of these are in the account settings, and none of them requires a conversation with us first.

None of these on its own proves anything. Several of them together, over a few weeks, is worth acting on.

• You go back to win losses back, and the stake goes up as the losses do.
• You play for longer than you meant to, most times you play.
• You gamble with money set aside for rent, bills, food or debts.
• You borrow, sell things, or take a cash advance to keep playing.
• You hide how much you play, or how much you have lost, from people close to you.
• You feel restless or short-tempered when you try to cut down.
• Work, study, sleep or relationships have started to suffer.
• Gambling has become how you handle stress, boredom or low mood.

If you recognised more than two of those, the helplines at the top of this page are free, confidential, and are not going to lecture you.

The most effective limit is the one set on a calm evening, before anything has gone wrong. It takes about a minute.

1. Work out what you could lose in a month without it changing anything about your life. That figure, not a percentage of your income, is the budget.
2. Open account settings and enter it as a monthly deposit limit. Add a weekly limit at roughly a quarter of it.
3. Add a loss limit as well. A deposit limit caps what goes in; a loss limit caps what actually disappears.
4. Turn on a session reminder at thirty or sixty minutes so time does not vanish.
5. Put a note in the calendar three months out. If you have wanted to raise a limit more than once in that time, that is information about the limit and about the habit.

A cool-off is a pause: the account locks, marketing stops, and you get your access back at the end without doing anything. Use it when you want a break rather than an ending.

Self-exclusion is the ending. It closes the account for at least six months and cannot be reversed by asking nicely, by us, or by you. Any balance is returned through the cashier before the account closes.

Closing every door at once

1. Self-exclude here, in account settings.
2. Register with BetStop at betstop.gov.au. One registration covers every licensed Australian online operator, and it takes a few minutes.
3. Ask your bank to block gambling transactions. Most Australian banks offer this in the app as a switch.
4. Install blocking software such as Gamban or BetBlocker across every device you own, including the phone.
5. Tell one person you trust that you have done all four. It is the step people skip and the one that holds.

The catalogue averages a return to player of 95.7%. That figure is measured over millions of spins across 2,959 games. It means that in the very long run the games return about 95.7 cents of every dollar staked and keep the rest.

It does not mean that a session returns 95.7% of what you put in. Over an evening the outcome can land anywhere, high or low, and it will not converge on the average. There is no point at which a game is "due", because every spin is independent of the one before it. A losing streak carries no information about the next result.

Gambling here is restricted to adults aged eighteen and over, and we verify age before any withdrawal. Accounts found to belong to a minor are closed, stakes are voided and any deposits are returned.

If children use a device you gamble on, protect it: sign out rather than staying logged in, use a device passcode they do not know, and consider filtering software such as Net Nanny or Qustodio. Leaving an account open on a shared tablet is the most common way this goes wrong.

Living with somebody else's gambling is its own problem, and the helplines above take calls from family and friends as readily as from the person gambling. Gambling Help Online on 1800 858 858 and Gambler's Help both run sessions specifically for affected others.

• Talk about it away from the moment — not during a session, not straight after a loss.
• Separate the money before you separate anything else. A financial counsellor on 1800 007 007 can help with that.
• Do not pay the debts off quietly. It removes the consequence without touching the cause.
• Get support for yourself, whether or not they get it for themselves.

Some of this is regulation and some of it is simply how we would want to be treated.

• Every account can set deposit limits, loss limits, session reminders, cool-off and self-exclusion, and none of them costs anything or requires our approval.
• Marketing stops the moment you opt out and stays stopped for the whole of any exclusion period.
• We verify age before a first withdrawal, without exception.
• Staff who handle accounts are trained to notice escalating deposits and to raise them rather than ignore them.
• We do not offer credit, and we do not encourage anyone to chase a loss.
• Games come from licensed studios running independently tested random number generators.

If you think we have fallen short of any of that, tell us through the contact page. We would rather hear it than not.