GAMSTOP, self-exclusion and the gap between them

What registering actually does

GAMSTOP is a national self-exclusion scheme. You register once, with your name, date of birth, address, email and any mobile numbers you use, and every operator holding a British remote licence is required to check the register and refuse you an account for the period you selected. You choose six months, one year or five years.

The obligation sits on the operator, which is what makes the scheme work. It is not a filter you install or a promise you make: an operator that opens an account for a registered person is in breach of a licence condition, and the regulator has fined firms for exactly that failure. The list of enforcement cases on this site includes several of them.

The period cannot be cut short. When it ends, the exclusion does not lift automatically either — you have to take a deliberate step to reactivate, and there is a cooling-off period built into that step. Both of those are design decisions aimed at the moment of impulse, and both are the reason the scheme is worth using rather than relying on willpower.

Registration takes a few minutes and is free. The most common mistake is registering with one email address and one phone number while holding accounts under another; the match runs on the details you supply, so supply all of them.

What it does not reach

• Operators licensed outside Great Britain. This is the entire "non-GAMSTOP casino" industry, and it markets itself on precisely this fact.
• Land-based venues — betting shops, arcades and casinos run their own separate schemes.
• Lottery products bought in shops, and some other non-remote channels.
• Any account you open with details that do not match the ones you registered.
• Advertising you see elsewhere on the internet, which is a separate problem solved with a blocking tool rather than with GAMSTOP.

The sites that advertise "not on GAMSTOP"

A whole category of operators targets British players specifically because they sit outside the licensing perimeter, and their main selling point is that a self-exclusion cannot reach them. Understanding what else is outside that perimeter is the point of this section.

No mandatory alternative dispute resolution, so a withheld withdrawal has nowhere independent to go. No deposit limits you can rely on, no reality checks, no obligation to intervene when a pattern of play looks harmful. No regulator with jurisdiction over your complaint, and no enforcement register recording what the operator has done before. The absence of GAMSTOP is not a feature that comes on its own — it comes with the absence of everything else.

This site only lists operators whose licence resolves in a public register, which excludes that entire category by construction. It is not a moral position; it is that a review of an operator we cannot verify would be a review of marketing copy.

The tools to use before you need GAMSTOP

Deposit limits are the most useful and the most underused. Set at the moment you open an account, a weekly limit is a decision taken calmly; a British licensee must offer them, must apply an increase only after a delay, and must apply a decrease immediately. That asymmetry exists because it works.

Time-outs are a short break — twenty-four hours to six weeks — that lock the account without the commitment of a full exclusion. They are the right tool for a bad evening, and they are reversible in a way that GAMSTOP deliberately is not.

Reality checks interrupt play at a set interval and state how long you have been in the session and what you are up or down. Set to thirty minutes, they are easy to click past once and uncomfortable to click past six times, which is exactly the intended effect.

Blocking software sits outside the operator entirely, on your own devices, and stops gambling sites loading at all. It closes the gap GAMSTOP leaves — the offshore sites — because it does not care who licenses the site it is blocking.

If any of this is being read with a specific worry in mind, the free national services are GamCare on 0808 8020 133, open around the clock, and the NHS gambling clinics. Neither of those is an advertisement and neither costs anything.

Practical questions people actually hit

A balance in an account when the exclusion starts should be returned to you. The operator closes the account to play but is expected to pay out funds that are yours, subject to the usual verification. If that does not happen, it is a complaint with a clear route, and a strong one.

Marketing must stop. An excluded person receiving promotional email or SMS is one of the failures the regulator acts on most consistently, and it is worth reporting with the message and the date.

Accounts held at brands owned by the same company are all blocked, because the obligation follows the licensee rather than the brand name. This is why the reviews on this site name the licensee company and its sibling domains: one licensee often runs half a dozen brands that look entirely unrelated from the outside.

Registering: what actually happens

Registration is a form on the scheme's own site, and it takes a few minutes. You supply name, date of birth, address, e-mail addresses and mobile numbers — as many as you have used at gambling sites, because matching is done on those details rather than on a single account.

You choose a minimum period: six months, one year or five years. The word minimum matters. At the end of the term the exclusion does not lapse automatically; it stays in force until you actively ask for it to be removed, and there is a further cooling-off period after that request before access returns.

Within 24 hours the registration propagates to every operator licensed for online gambling in Britain. Existing accounts are closed to play and new registrations are refused while the exclusion is active.

The detail people get wrong is the address and contact history. If you registered at a casino with an old e-mail address or a previous address, include it. Matching is only as good as what you give it, and a forgotten e-mail address is the usual route by which someone finds an old account still open.

Marketing should stop as well: an operator is required to remove an excluded customer from promotional contact. If marketing continues after 24 hours, that is a compliance failure worth reporting to the operator in writing and, if it persists, to the regulator.

What sits around it: the other three layers

Self-exclusion works best as one of four layers rather than as a single decision, because each layer covers a gap the others leave.

The bank block is the money layer. Most British banks offer a free gambling block in the app; it refuses gambling merchant transactions, applies to every site including unlicensed ones, and usually has a cooling-off period of 24 to 72 hours before it can be turned off. It is the fastest thing to switch on and the hardest to reverse in a moment of impulse.

Blocking software is the device layer. Gamban, BetBlocker and similar tools block gambling sites and apps across your devices; BetBlocker is free. They cover the sites the national scheme cannot reach — the ones without a British licence — and they cover the moment before a payment is attempted.

The operator layer is the account tools: deposit limits, loss limits, time-outs and single-operator self-exclusion. These are the mildest of the four and the most useful before things become serious, because they are reversible with friction rather than final.

The fourth layer is people. GamCare's National Gambling Helpline runs 24 hours a day on 0808 8020 133 and is free from any phone. Talking to somebody costs nothing and does not commit you to anything.

When the exclusion ends

At the end of your minimum period the exclusion remains active until you contact the scheme and ask for it to be lifted. That request triggers a further waiting period — commonly seven days — before gambling accounts become accessible again. Both steps are deliberate friction, and both work.

Reactivation is not automatic at the operators either. Each account you held has been closed to play, and coming back means going through the operator's own reinstatement process, which normally involves a conversation about limits rather than a single click.

Two things worth deciding before the period ends rather than on the day: what deposit limit you will set immediately on any account you reopen, and whether you will leave the bank block and blocking software in place. Keeping the outer layers while removing the inner one is a reasonable middle position and nobody will suggest it to you.

If the period ends and you would rather it did not, doing nothing is the correct action. The exclusion continues by default, which is the one design decision in this whole subject that works in the right direction.

If an operator lets you play anyway

It happens, and it is a serious failure rather than an administrative slip. A British-licensed operator that accepts a registered self-excluded customer has breached its licence conditions, and the Commission has taken enforcement action over exactly this.

What to do: stop, take screenshots of the account and any deposits, and write to the operator raising a formal complaint and asking for a final response. Ask specifically for a refund of deposits made while excluded — this is one of the situations where refunds are routinely granted, because the operator should not have accepted the money.

If the operator refuses, take it to its alternative dispute resolution provider, which is free and can order the operator to pay. Report it to the Gambling Commission as well. The regulator does not resolve individual disputes, but breaches of self-exclusion are exactly the kind of intelligence that produces the enforcement cases we mirror on this site.

Do not simply keep playing on the basis that the site let you in. The obligation is the operator's, but the money is yours, and every deposit made in the meantime weakens the argument that the exclusion was being taken seriously on your side.

Money already lost, and what can be recovered

The question people ask most often after registering is whether anything can be recovered. The honest answer has two halves.

Losses incurred before you excluded are generally not recoverable. Gambling at a licensed operator that behaved correctly is a completed transaction, and neither an adjudicator nor the regulator will unwind it because the outcome was bad. This is uncomfortable and it is the position.

Losses incurred after a valid self-exclusion are a different matter entirely. An operator that accepted deposits from a registered excluded customer has breached its licence conditions, and refunds in that situation are routinely granted — through the operator's complaints process first, and through its alternative dispute resolution provider if refused. Keep the dates: the registration date and the deposit dates are the whole case.

A third category sits between them: losses at an operator that failed to act on clear indicators of harm. That is the subject of most of the enforcement settlements we mirror, and while those cases produce penalties paid to the regulator rather than refunds to individuals, a complaint on those grounds is not frivolous and has occasionally produced redress.

None of this is a reason to delay excluding. The recoverable category only begins on the day you register.

Helping someone else

You cannot register somebody else with the national scheme. It requires their details and their consent, and an exclusion applied without either would not survive contact with the operator's verification anyway.

What you can do is narrower and still useful. Bank blocks can be applied to a joint account by any account holder. Blocking software can be installed on a shared device. And an operator can be told, in writing, that a customer is at risk — a third-party report does not force an operator to close an account, but a licensed one is required to take it into account.

GamCare's helpline advises friends and family as well as gamblers, on the same free number, at any hour. Gambling harm affects people around the gambler in ways the industry's own materials rarely address, and speaking to somebody who deals with it daily is more useful than any page on the subject, including this one.

If money has already gone, resist the instinct to cover it quietly. Debts that are absorbed without discussion tend to recur, and the pattern is well enough documented that every support organisation warns about it first.

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