Being faced with an empty bank account due to a heavy night of gambling online is something that sadly many a gambler has experienced and will relate to over the years.
Much more so with the advance and popularity of online casino sites and general gambling sites.
That is something that has caught the attention of UK Regulators and having been rightly badgered by many problem gambling charities recently, those regulators have taken a deep look at how they oversee their gambling site license holders.
What their fresh approach to responsible gambling has achieved is a range of new laws and regulations that all gambling site operators must adhere to, and if they don’t they risk some hefty fines for failing to protect their customers or even risk losing their gaming license.
I will now give you some insight into how tightening UK gambling site rules has led to a much safer and some would say much more enjoyable gaming experience for anybody who does gamble online and is based anywhere in Great Britain, and in my opinion, it is a series of initiatives worldwide gambling regulators should adopt too.
One thing that did need addressing was the appeal of certain games to underage gamblers, and that is something the Gambling Commission in the UK did address.
For example, any slot machines that boasted a theme and design that would appeal to anyone not old enough to legally gamble online had to be removed from the gaming suite of all UK-based casino sites.
That saw literally hundreds of slot games being retired and removed from both UK online casinos and mobile casino apps.
Another thing that did need addressing, and urgently, was the ease at which players could deposit and go on to lose huge amounts of cash with no questions asked.
All casino operators in the UK were therefore ordered to put in place tools that online gamblers could easily access which would allow them to put in place their own personal limits on how much they could deposit into a gambling site.
Deposit limit settings are now something every British gambler has access to when they log into any gambling related site and they are actively encouraged to select an amount of cash they want as their own personal deposit limit.
Once they reach that limit they cannot deposit any more funds into their account. It is also worth me pointing out that if someone does select a high deposit limit, casino operators will be required to ask that customer where they are getting their gambling funds from and prove they can afford to gamble for high stakes as well.
Should someone make multiple deposits in a short space of time, many gambling site operators will force upon them a time out, which basically means those customers cannot make a deposit for several hours or even a day or two.
One thing that did annoy many people in Great Britain was the amount of time it took a gambling site to pay them out their winnings.
Often when someone requested a withdrawal from their account, it would sit in a pending state for several days, and a reversal option would be available to them, allowing them to cancel the withdrawal request and carry on gambling.
The temptation to continue gambling and reverse their winnings to enable them to do so proved too strong for many gamblers, who would then lose back those winnings and often go on to make additional deposits, in the hope they win back the winnings they had ended up losing.
As such, regulators have now demanded that not only should winnings never be put in a reversible state, but they should be processed instantly.
That means players can cash out their winnings at any time and have the peace of mind in knowing they will never be tempted to continue gambling by reversing those winnings and they will get paid their winnings out in full and rapidly too.
One final thing that has also been put into place is a transparent system regarding the payout percentages and house edges each individual casino game offers, as that information is clearly displayed on each casino website as demanded by the Gaming Commission. So players always know the paybacks each game offers.
