Online Gambling Addiction – An Introduction to Gambling Addiction and Self-Exclusion
The recent stats on online gambling addiction figures have revealed that more than 1.5 millions British residents gamble online through live web-based portals and poker being among the most common sports to bet on. But some analysts think it’s just the beginning and that much of a problem is still to be seen. The stats also show that the average age to start gambling online is now 34 for males and 25 for females. There has been a marked increase in those who gamble on the Internet compared to the number who do so in the traditional brick and mortar casinos. This trend is said by experts to be associated with the fact that more people find it easier to gamble online. So, if you are thinking of trying your luck at UK online casinos, the following information will be helpful.
Online gamblers in the UK are not just those who frequent bingo sites but poker rooms, slots and sports betting websites too. One thing that they all have in common is that the amount they spend on gambling online is relatively small compared to what they’d spend in real life. This means that they have more spare cash to splurge and spread around. This is what is non gamstop casinos making online gambling addiction such a serious issue.
Most players who gamble on the Internet are men aged between twenty and thirty. Women usually gamble in online casino games and at slot machines. They also participate in other types of gambling like horse racing and soccer. In addition, a large proportion of online gamblers prefer to play for longer durations than the average person would. They can sometimes end up spending several hundred pounds in a single day, sometimes even more.
Gamblers can get hooked on online casino games by different things. The most common is to use it to “reward” members of chat rooms with good rewards or to try to win money. Online gamblers need to be careful not to fall into this trap. If they get carried away with their losses they could start to spend all their savings or worse take out loans they cannot afford to pay back. To avoid this, many players sign up to paypal, a kind of payment scheme that promises to secure their money in the event of non-payment.
An increasingly popular method of dealing with gambling behaviour is called self-exclusion. It is a process whereby members of a chat room or a casino agree to exclude each other from their chat activities for a set period of time. A set number of words or phrases are used to describe the time period. This technique is popular in the United Kingdom because players do not have to worry about the words being approved by anyone else in the room. However, some people have found it ineffective because of the way in which they are excluded.
An alternative way to self-exclude is through an application such as Gambling Anonymous, which was developed by the Knightsbridge Group. An example of this type of app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store for free. Users who log onto the application will be asked to download the Knightsbridge code, which will need to be added to their phones’ data settings. This will allow them to log on and play any casino game they want without having to worry about their account being hacked or their money being taken.