Table of Contents
The Fundamentals of Responsible Gambling
As a brand, platform, and company engaged in the distribution of services related to gambling, we have the duty to acknowledge the risks posed by such an activity. While not a complex matter by default, playing games of luck can cause complications that need not bear on your lifestyle and health.
In this spirit, it’s in everybody’s best interest to understand the importance of responsible gambling. It has quite a few implications from various points of view, and it is our desire to showcase it to the best of our abilities.
The text on this page will be our introductory guide on how to best tackle the matter of gambling addiction risks, how to implement countermeasures, and where to look for help in case you are in need of help.
As ever, the SlotsCalendar NZ professional staff expressly recommends opting for a safe approach when it comes to the overall principles of responsible gambling. Allow us to explain what it is that you need to be aware of and implement.
Why SlotsCalendar NZ Thoroughly Supports Responsible Gambling
The pono behind responsible gambling is that it is an initiative that arose because of necessity.
As gambling, in its position as a viable and increasingly legalised entertainment avenue, started to gain unmistakable popularity, a concerningly proportional level of gambling addiction cases came forth.
Pressure from advocacy groups, whether they were from civil society or just from governmental entities, started to voice relevant concerns about this phenomenon. Rising tensions created an environment that required comprehensive measures.
Thus, the initiative of responsible gambling came to be. It’s an admission of tūraru from the industry - one that acknowledges theoretical issues as more forthcoming than just possibilities. It involves the well-maintained perspective of an environment that requires a precise set of pieces of advice.
Let us present it from our point of view. At SlotsCalendar NZ, acknowledging the realities of our platform model is key. While our site allows you to play games of luck without financial involvement, we also discuss real money gambling products and services, all while listing and reviewing them.
We understand that such exposure, even when gated by age restrictions, is a step on the stairway toward excessive gambling. All it takes is continuous overreliance on the risk-reward back and forth, followed by increasingly ambitious spending patterns.
Given that online gambling has provided absolute access to all kinds of online gambling hubs, legal or otherwise, our status as a player-first brand compels us to discuss all of the industry’s issues. However, we wouldn’t be experts if we didn’t talk about them in full detail, allowing us to showcase our expertise and steer you in the proper direction.
SlotsCalendar Tips: Please check out our statement on safe gambling as well. While this responsible gambling page is how we aim to address issues related to gambling addiction and personal effects, the safe gambling page will be where we explain what you need to do to be safe in the online gambling industry as a whole!
Examining The Main Responsible Gambling Practices
Let’s open this discussion with some forthcoming elements of how you should approach responsible gambling. Rather than talking about the signs and issues of gambling addiction from the jump, we will talk about what you can do to save yourself trouble down the line.
The principle is simple: you are doing your best in shaping your behaviour towards haepapa. It’s about how you manage your gaming budget, how you whip it into shape once the need for it arises, and why it’s important to have a very good understanding of your finances.
However, it’s not all about money handling. You also need to be in tune with your own mental state, especially if you experience effects that you are not familiar with. The most important part of this process is to be sincere in how you act, especially if you need to acknowledge some difficult things.
The road to gambling issues differs from person to person, which is why there needs to be a level of personal applicability of these practices. For them to work, you need to understand them, to grasp their importance at any level, and remember why you’ve searched for them in the first place.
In this section, we will continue our educational kimi and talk about what you need to implement if you are truly committed to responsible gambling.
Limits and Conscious Gambling
Let us start by talking about what we like to call conscious gambling. It’s not necessarily an industry-wide name; it’s just something that we like to use because it makes things easier to understand.
When you play at online casinos with advanced platforms that have a proper understanding of what they need to do to promote responsible gambling, you realise that they have a reality check feature. It’s a notification that takes up your screen and tells you that you’ve been gambling for a given amount of time, usually every 60 minutes.
From our point of view, conscious gambling is the reason why you should heed this warning, but also try to implement it a little better. It’s about creating a distinction between what gambling is, what it should be, and knowing its risks before overcommitting.
At the same time, you shouldn’t take all the effort upon yourself. There are some casino features that assist you in keeping your online gambling whanonga in check. You’ll find them at plenty of online casinos as ‘account limits.’ As it stands, they should be something like:
Financial limits, related to your money, are those that put certain stops on how your gambling money flows. The deposit limit is how you overimpose a budget on playing at a certain online casino. The loss limit is your method of curbing a streak of unfavourable outcomes. Another such limit is for the bet value, which ensures that you have a maximum that you can wager per hand.
Time limits are about putting a threshold on the time you spend gambling. While the ideal scenario would be to be able to limit this factor yourself, placing these restrictions on your account is like a form of insurance. You can place them for daily usage or over a longer period. The idea is to be careful about the amount of time that you dedicate to such an activity.
Overall, the general principle is to be deliberate about limiting the resources that you spend on gambling, be they time or money. If you understand why and how to do so, it will provide you with a clearer path towards conscious gambling.
Keeping In Touch With Your Mental State
The simple truth is that you need to have both an open mind and an open manawa about the challenges of online gambling.
If you’ve ever had a taste of this activity, you know that winning provides a level of exuberance that leaves you wanting more. However, when you lose, frustration comes at a very powerful level, creating a level of imbalance in your emotional response. This should tell you how important it is to keep a clear head at all times.
As the saying goes, doing so is easier said than done, especially in an activity with such a clear and simple reward dynamic. As such, it’s very easy to develop tendencies that can lead you to overbearing effects, especially those that can turn compulsive.
We acknowledge this issue, and we need to remind you about the importance of self-assessment. If you navigate the responsible gambling page of any given online casino, it’s very likely that you’ll find some self-assessment test, be it interactive or just in the form of a simple questionnaire.
Using such tests, especially the interactive ones, requires openness and honesty. This method is a very efficient way of assessing your relationship with gambling. Namely, to determine if it spirals into toxicity, if it’s threading lines, or if you’re in a good place that would benefit from stability.
The conclusion is that every form of introspection is important. When you’re constantly playing online games of luck or just betting on sports, you need to see if your actions coincide with healthy gambling practices. Being realistic is the key to sustainability, and it all begins with constantly assessing your mental state, but only if you’re truly sincere!
Distance Can Be The Remedy
When we talk about distance, we refer to the distance that is between you and gambling activities. Fundamentally, it’s a step back that you might need to take if you are to retain a semblance of balance between what gambling is supposed to be and what it actually is.
As we’ve said multiple times throughout the content that you find on SlotsCalendar NZ, the ideal status of gambling in one’s life is a mere entertainment format. You are relying on waimaria to give you a sense of excitement. While the premise of winning money is certainly appealing, it should not be how you view gambling.
Personal validation is another factor in how plenty of gamblers have a rapport with this activity, and our advice is that you don’t fall into the same emotional trap. If you do, you need to go back and reassess your relationship with gambling, especially its effects on your mental state.
Once you’re in this dilemma, the natural need is to reevaluate what’s actually going on. The best way to do so? Stepping back: your way of gaining a broader perspective. In another sense, it’s your way of keeping a distance from gambling altogether. You are engaging with your supposed problem any more, which is particularly helpful.
This is when you need to start tracking your movements. Are you respecting your budgetary situation in a true sense? Do you feel more joy than frustration in your general gambling activities? Is it time to just step away and admit the fact that you are not in the best situation available?
Posing all of these questions and finding solutions requires one simple thing: distance from gambling. Step back, use the self-restriction service that all online gambling platforms must provide when required, and reevaluate your situation in such a way that helps you.
Keep Things About Having Fun
In the effort to keep gambling activities all about entertainment, one of the most essential steps is to think about what your motives are. Are you looking to gain something else from gambling, such as extra money to spend? Is it so that you’re looking to cover life expenses with this kind of money?
Your answer will always dictate how you see the act of gambling. As you should know, there is no stability from gambling winnings, unless you are a professional poker player, which requires exceptional skills that you may or may not possess.
In this situation, there is nothing that would constitute a huanga since there is no stability. The bad part is that you would feel pressure to win at a high rate, enough to make a profit that would sustain you. Once you start feeling this pressure, toxicity levels rise, and gambling activities simply cease being fun whatsoever.
In this instance, we have touched on the importance of associating gambling with entertainment, and nothing else.
As long as you tell yourself that you’re just having fun, you need to remind yourself not to create problems by overspending. You don’t want your future you to associate gambling with financial issues and develop resentment. And, as we’ve just said, you don’t want to associate financial pressure with this activity.
Isolate it as much as you can from the realities of life and recognise that gambling is just your way of enjoying a lighthearted activity, nothing more.
Not Letting Gambling Get in The Way of Life’s Essentials
Let’s talk about the other side of the coin: the overall status of entertainment within your lifestyle.
Modern life has many responsibilities and problems, especially if you’re an action-oriented person who is in charge of much of what goes on in your life. Expenditures, workplace performance, family dynamics, social life, you name it. These are energy spenders that you need to dedicate your time to if you are to enjoy a balanced life.
The advantage of gambling, the entertainment format, is that it does not require a lot of time, thinking, or even money, especially if you’re frugal with the amounts that you bet. You can say that it’s an ‘easy’ button that provides a simple reward mechanism that can bring a bit of dynamism in a minimal dosage.
This is where the issue lies: overreliance on the gambling entertainment model. You might say that relaxing and having a good time boils down to this activity. Such thinking is simply not a method of gambling responsibly because it would constitute too much gambling, especially if you start dumping more money and time.
The best way to do so is to go back to the idea of time limits and recognise that you should dedicate just a sliver of time to it. Think about what else makes you happy and entertains you. This applies to all kinds of scenarios, from the money that you spend on this form of entertainment to the attention and mental capacity that it takes from you.
Let gambling be a secondary part of your entertainment and relaxation routine, not a primary one. The less you feel like you’re relying on gambling, the better and healthier your relationship with it will be.
Embarking on a Healing Process
We need to talk about the principle of embarking on a healing journey. We’re talking about an initiative that needs several steps of acknowledgement.
The first step is to admit that you have an issue. You might admit to yourself, or when revealing this matter to those around you. The truth is that being open about such problems is quite difficult. It takes courage and a level of comfort that you may not feel. Any delay can be problematic in various ways.
The second one is to realise that your efforts of prevention haven’t worked. It’s not something to feel ashamed about, nor is it the end of the world. It’s just a signal that, if you’re to return to gambling at any point, you’d need a tighter system of self-protection.
The third one is to cease gambling activities completely. It’s the step back that we’ve mentioned above. Take a break, self-restrict, and try to stabilise your mental state. Withdrawal signs might be part of this process, so beware.
Finally, you need to get in direct and quick contact with any relief method that you can find. If you have access and can afford therapy, it’s great to do so. If you do not, New Zealand has plenty of options that you can go for without actually having to pay for them. The final section of this page will be where you’ll find several helpful options!
The conclusion is simple: you need to take the necessary steps for something that can help you find your footing. Healing from any sort of addiction isn’t easy, and you will definitely have hurdles along the way.
Lean on any type of support that you have access to, and remember that you are not alone or helpless!
Are There Signs of Gambling Addiction?
There are plenty of signs that would indicate that you are spiralling towards gambling addiction, and each of them can signal how grave this problem is.
Let us come to your aid and give you a bit of a rundown on what the most widespread of them are. The applicability and resonance depend quite clearly on personal cases, which means that this list contains a series of standard symptoms.
Your spending on gambling outweighs your financial capabilities. By not respecting the principle of using disposable funds (i.e., the money that remains once you’ve covered your living expenditures), you are clearly tapping into resources that you shouldn’t touch. This means that you are clearly having issues with abstaining from irresponsible spending on gambling.
You rely on further gambling to recoup your losses rather than stopping the bleeding. If you think that more gambling is the solution to a series of losses, you are relying on this activity to bring you financial balance. It’s a fundamental mistake that can be very dangerous as a mentality.
You end up isolating and lying about gambling. It may be that you feel shame or fear about the truth of your gambling activities. Such an attitude is beyond problematic since you are spiralling alone. It can start with a little lie about how much exactly you’ve spent on gambling, but it can also snowball into complete dishonesty and mohoaotanga.
You let gambling consume you. Isolation may be one of the symptoms of this activity completely taking over your life. Situations like only thinking about gambling, or feeling some form of stimulus from gambling only, not to mention spending a majority of your money on it, are some of the most dangerous cases when gambling takes over your life.
You start relying on money that isn’t yours to spend. This includes borrowing money from people you know, using credit lines for something like this, and even resorting to loan sharks. In the (arguably) worst of cases, you end up engaging in illicit activities for the sole purpose of having money to gamble.
You know you have bad gambling habits, but you are not willing or able to do anything about them. This is a dangerous case when self-awareness is not enough. You continue to gamble, but the only thing that you feel is whakahēmanawatanga and dread. In such cases, communication about your state would be vital, especially if you need an intervention.
How Kiwis Can Get Help in Their Healing Journey
As we’ve mentioned earlier, there is no reason to believe that you don’t have options to rely on. After all, the issue with increasing rates of gambling addiction is not something that eludes the concerns of civil society, or even the state.
If you are open to realising and accepting that you have a gambling problem, you’ve made a huge stride. Once you’re willing to communicate this issue with those around you, things ought to have an even better outlook.
There is no ngaringariā in seeking help, nor is it a problem to hope that it is free. Everybody has the right to receive assistance in a journey that is all about retaking control over their own life. As a Kiwi, there are several helping hands that await your call, and they include:
Gambling Helpline NZ (0800 654 655): As a source of specialised assistance that can provide you with support on any front, this helpline will provide you with the help that you need. It’s the ultimate option if you want to get back on track. Please note that the service also provides specialised help for members of the Maori community. You’ll just need to specify that you wish to speak to a Maori-speaking member of their team.
PGF Services NZ: Yet another highly supportive and efficient method of looking for gambling addiction help. There is a fundamental step that you need to take, and PGF Services can give you the support you need!
The Salvation Army – Oasis Gambling Support: As an organisation that provides help to indigenous communities across Oceania, The Salvation Army will provide you with very empathetic assistance.
Asian Family Services – Gambling Support for Asian Communities: Given that it’s an organisation with a wide reach, it can provide specialised support that can prove instrumental in your healing journey.
As a closing word, we want to draw the only conclusion that it’s worth stating: SlotsCalendar NZ will always support responsible gambling. Whether it’s our effort to draw awareness or just our empathetic kupu tohutohu, we want to do our utmost in this duty that we have. The duty that we have to you, our reader.
Please remember to always choose the most responsibility-driven approach, to be sincere in how you relate to gambling, and always prioritise health and balance!
