Play smart - Information & Tips on Self-Limitation

All reputable online casinos take great care to emphasise and promote the importance of responsible gambling, thereby supporting the financial, mental and emotional safety of their players. Gaming is nothing without players, and since the reverse is also true, i.e. no player without a game, it is good to maintain a healthy balance that keeps the whole machine running.

Online casinos strive to provide their players with enough useful information to ensure that the enjoyment of the game and the awareness of it can comfortably coexist. If you want long-term fun, a well-rounded game and multiplied chances of winning, this information is really worth paying close attention to.

How does the limit setting work for different licences?

One of the essential elements of responsible online gaming is the iGaming licence that an online casino must have. The two leading casino licences are the Curaçao and MGA licences.

For the Curaçao licence, players usually have to request the setting of their preferred money limit from the direct provider, via chat or email, as there is usually no option to set it in the online interface. Therefore, you have to write a message to the customer support.

The MGA licence works completely differently. Here, within your own account, an option becomes available that is a platform where you can set the limit that suits you best. You can choose to have a weekly or monthly deposit limit, a daily, weekly or monthly wagering limit, i.e. the maximum amount you want to spend on online gaming within a certain period of time. So there are a number of options that you can set according to your preferences.

For example, you can set to deposit only $20 or $40 per day, but also $200 per month 💸. It's also no problem if you change your mind in the meantime, since you can easily change these options. Depending on the casino, it usually takes 24-72 hours to override. This 1-3 day time interval is also precisely to prevent sudden and potentially rash decisions.

At around 95% of online casinos, you can decide whether you want to play with a daily, weekly or monthly limit, and set the best version for you. Within this option, you can also set your own deposit limit, i.e. the amount you want to play with.

But you can also set the amount of money you want to wager. Spinning is perhaps not the best way to describe it, because if you're lucky you can spin up to $40,000 for only $4. It is roughly similar to wagering, i.e. it indicates the amount you bet. With MGA you can also limit this amount, although this makes less sense. 

The best solution for everyone is to have a precisely set monthly limit on the amount you can deposit. There is also the possibility to set a limit for each slot machine, for example, you can lose up to $75 per 100 spins. However, this has nothing to do with how much you can top up or how much you can lose or win. It is an automatic system, you can set a bet of say 1 unit per 100 spins. But there is also a way to stop the 100 automatic spins after, say, 50 unsuccessful spins.

So what are limits actually for?

Limit options have been found to be useful and necessary by many experienced players. Even if we sometimes get carried away, after a while we realise that our love and enjoyment of the game can take a completely wrong turn and lead to gambling addiction. And if you don't want to lose the experience of gambling altogether, it's a good idea to take out insurance.

On average and optimally, a person spends between 10-30% of their monthly income on entertainment. Naturally, gambling can be included in this category. So if you go out to a nightclub, play golf or go to the cinema and sometimes leave a part of your income there, you can do the same in an online casino. But before you play, it is advisable to calculate the amount of money you are willing to spend, set a monthly limit and make sure that you do not exceed it.

If you're looking for a steady and stable income from gambling, you're better off not gambling at all. The real love of gambling is not based on making a quick and sure fortune, and if that's your goal, you probably don't know the real meaning of gambling. It's about the feeling of being alive, the adrenaline, the escape from monotony. Of course, it depends on the player, it's probably different for everyone, but one thing is for sure, it moves you.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to win, and in many cases you will, but if that's the only reason you're playing, then gambling is not for you. Real gamblers can accept that in the long run it will be the house that wins. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense, because if the house didn't win, it wouldn't be worth it to keep any casino going.

This is actually nothing new, because like any business that is set up and run to generate profit, online casinos are no different. The difference is that the house's profit is entirely contingent. Just because, let’s say, five players in a row have lost big, there's no guarantee that the sixth will hit it big. Then, maybe, the next one comes along and pockets it all in a few minutes with minimal investment 💰.

A healthy and realistic approach to gambling can be to think of the money invested in the game as no longer belonging to you, it simply doesn't exist. And if we win, it's just a bonus.

Another good limit tip can be to keep your money for gambling in a separate wallet or bank account, so you know that it is set aside. Once you've spent it or zeroed out your account, you can stop and wait for your next month's income.

Return to Player (RTP) and payout limit

It is important not to be fooled by the RTP rates. For example, if you see an RTP of 96% at an online casino, it does not mean that you will win 96 times out of 100 tries.

The rates have been tested over millions of spins and this rate is for long term play. Not to mention that a given game is played by multiple players at the same time. Since we're talking about online games, we can have hundreds or thousands of people playing the same game at the same time in the rest of the world.

The online casino is a platform in itself, a platform that rents the games available on its website from the game providers 🍒. They are responsible for the Random Number Generator (RNG), the impulses, the payouts, etc. So the main goal of online casinos is to attract as many people as possible to play the games they offer.

Every casino has a payout limit, which should also not be ignored. This means that the maximum amount a player can realistically win in the current month is, say, $30,000. If he withdraws more than that, the difference over the limit stays in the house. This can, admittedly, sometimes be quite discouraging for players.

The vast majority of casinos have daily, weekly and monthly payout limits. For example, you can withdraw $1,500 a day or $7,500 a month. This means that it takes a little more time to withdraw the money for larger amounts, but players receive their money, if not in one lump sum, then gradually. This is to ensure that casinos are insured against financial collapse, as withdrawing a large amount of money could bankrupt the casino.

Differences between land-based and online casinos

Unlike land-based casinos, the advantage of online casinos is that for VIP players, these payout limits can sometimes be negotiable. Loyal players can bargain with the online casino on how much to pay out, the intervals at which the winning amount is received, and other such options 💵.

Because of the elimination of physical space, online casinos have a much higher turnover of money, as hundreds or thousands of players can be playing on a single machine at a time, whereas in land-based casinos only one person can use a machine at a time.

There are no limits in physical casinos, only self-exclusion, and this also varies from country to country. In Hungary, England and Germany there is a self-exclusion, but in other countries you simply go and play.

As a preventive measure, self-exclusion, like the intention to play, requires registration. In land-based casinos, a membership card must be exchanged in order to participate in the game, so you have to pass through a reception desk and go through some formalities.

Online casinos are required by law to display on their websites the contact details of organisations that can help with gambling addiction. These are usually displayed in the footer (e.g. Gamble responsibly), but if you type in gambling problems in the chat, your account is usually automatically blocked.

In rarer and more extreme cases, when a player raises the possibility of suicide, the tech support staff at online casinos are obliged to notify the relevant authorities.

The most common signs of gambling addiction

With enough irresponsibility, it can easily end badly, so it's a good idea to make sure that money saved in savings accounts is never spent on gambling. It's important not to let our basic needs get in the way of our passion for gambling, and it's reassuring not to gamble with borrowed money. So avoid situations like these.

In our experience, the majority of gamblers are thoughtful and responsible users. Approximately 30% of them have a behaviour and attitude that deviates from the norm, and unfortunately they are the ones who should not be investing their money in gambling.

Let us not fall for the generalisation that anyone who goes into a casino automatically loses all their money and takes bread from a starving family. The losses are not large in most cases, but as mentioned above, we should never delude ourselves into thinking that gambling will make us rich in a matter of minutes.

In general, people who lose a lot in the game are those who have little or no capital to begin with. With a little care, you can enjoy the full benefits of gambling without spending an unreasonable amount of money on entertainment ♣️. You have to be able to stop gambling, because self-control really is key in this area. By following a few basic and simple rules, safe and long lasting fun is guaranteed.