The GC defines it as 'gambling to a degree that compromises, disrupts, or damages family, personal or recreational pursuits'.  A bit vague that one.    And what if you define gambling as your recreational pursuit!??

I'd love to know how someone puts £1K into a betting account if they only have £500!

But I don't buy that as a definition. What is someone who in that position spends £1K on a holiday? A problem tourist?

In all walks of life there are people who spend more than their disposable income on things. As I mentioned upthread, like Waitrose shopping. Are they problem grocery shoppers? How about people who are on benefits and have iPhone subscriptions? Do people blame Vodafone for selling for selling them mobiles that they can't 'afford'.

How about people who have babies that can't even afford to feed themselves with their own money. Problem parents?

Totally agree cider, that problem 'spending' can clearly occur in so many different ways aside from gambling.

Addiction research actually has some categories officially such as 'problem shopping/spending' behaviour - yet I'm pretty sure the government won't be doing a single thing to curb that, in any way, for anyone.

Yes and that's before you go into any correlation with gambling on day trading, options, derivatives, currency et al. AJ Bell or Trading 121 are not responsible for allowing me to invest capital in the stock market, even if it makes me potless.

Yes that's a fair retort. My replies were aimed in general at the people on the opposite side of this, not you personally. But 'our' side is playing the wrong ball, as I keep alluding to. Horse racing has no financial responsibility for the people who bet on it, who can't control their own finances. The nirvana of people only spending their money wisely (on whatever) is demonstrably unachievable. So why give credibility to the theory that it is possible in gambling.

Bookies have a responsibility for still tapping up people who have told them that they no longer want their business. And if do they, should face commensurate consequences.

When I was a lot younger, and stupider (sic), my biggest problem with gambling all came through credit - because I had some earnings credit cards were getting flung at me like sweeties. It caused me several years of very difficult times and recovery financially that I can just about enjoy nowadays.

Yet, that problem still persists for those who spend outside of gambling, even in this age of the 'cost of living crisis' - there are loan companies and credit card companies spreading their disease everywhere! - yet apparently it is the responsible guy having a 50 quid bet that is the problem to tackle!

I agree duffy, I don't foresee the prospects of the direction of travel changing, whatever happens. However, language is very important. It really irritates me when the liberalists come up with a term and it enters the general discourse as if everyone accepts it as being a thing. There is no such thing as a problem gambler in my view.

There is no such thing as a problem gambler in my view.

Not sure I'd actually agree with that. There are clearly people who get completely addicted to betting, and will keep pumping in any money they have  on ill-thought bet after ill-thought bet. Plenty of us go through that to a greater or (mostly) lesser extent, and most of us find ways of controlling our urges. But there are a few who, no matter whatever they do, will never be able to clear the red mist when they lose a bet. And those people really should stay away from gambling.

Whether the rest of us should be forced to shelve our hobby in order to help those few is another question, though.  (Once you go down that route, you're effectively saying that nobody should be allowed to drive cars or drink or go out in public.)

what will all the problem gamblers do with their spare money now? serious question.

TBH, the most likely answer is pay off whatever combined debts or bills they haven't paid. If someone is a real problem gambler they will have built up a backlog of non-paid bills.

But, as cider and others point out, that problem is far from limited to gambling debts. It will still be a problem for many people, that they have landed in great mountains of debt and non-paid bills across society. I agree with cider, this is a moral campaign against gambling in particular, based on non-founded ethical principles and dislike for gambling.

That's an easy one. As Dustybin says, they'll either go to unregulated foreign bookies or else they'll just amble along to the casinos/slot shops that are about to proliferate on the high street.  Addicts looking for a fix will always find ways of getting themselves into trouble, and this white paper will conjure up lots of possibilities for them.

The £2k over three months anyone spoke to Betfair about this . Will it be deposit driven or from the three month rolling p/l. Any thoughts ?

I would guess that if there is a definition of problem gambling, it is going to revolve around people who get into financial problems, from gambling or otherwise, and view gambling as a way of resolving those problems. Furthermore, I would be surprised if many people with a reasonable level of accessible cash reserves were problem gamblers under any definition.

I'm sure people try the same with lottery tickets, scratch cards, bingo halls, casino, btc, get rich quick schemes, whatever. Gambling is a symptom for those people, not the cause.

Think you hit it cider. It's an ego thing with many of them. They think they are so special that they should be on what top earners are making. " I'm as good or better than anyone " so should be on good money.

Not true sadly, Glasgow.   Many of the betting firms will be bringing their policies into line with these requirements with almost immediate effect. (Affordability checks were brought in by some of the firms from the moment they were first talked about.)    And even where they don't implement them, we're unlikely to be told this officially. So we'll have to proceed as though they have been implemented, unless we want to be suddenly hit by a demand for bank statements etc.

It's all such overkill. If they simply insisted that no deposits could be made if your 30-day or 7-day profit/loss figure was negative, and that if you were showing a minus figure for the day, you wouldn't be allowed to deposit for a week (or even two), that would solve many of the more serious problems with sports betting.   As I've said before, the gamblers who get themselves into serious problems are the ones who get the red mist, place lots of bets until their account balance has gone, and then simply redeposit again and again over a multi-day spree. Those are the people you really need to save from themselves, and a temporary deposit freeze mechanism would, at the very least, give them a time-out that would allow them to clear their heads.

The biggest flaw there would be that they can simply go to another betting site and deposit there instead, but it does seem as though we're moving towards a system where the different firms share a certain amount of data on their customers, so that will be harder to get around in the future.

We can be pretty sure the betting sites already know who the addicts are, just as they also have a good idea who the 'shrewdies' are.

'define a problem gambler'





A person whose life has been ruined by gambling and we all know many. My own father was a prime example.

The same way the "problem worker" who spends all his time doing so, is dealt with.  Oh wait.

I'm bloody confused, is it 125 or 1,000 a day