After months of behind-the-scenes work, Casino Guru is pleased to announce the official launch of the initiative to build a global self-exclusion system, with the goal of making online gambling safer for everyone and reducing harm caused by it to vulnerable players.

The team behind Casino Guru, a global informational website about online casinos, is always looking for things to improve within the gambling industry, especially in regard to player safety and fairness. When reviewing casinos and helping players mistreated by dishonest gambling sites, they kept noticing the insufficient protection offered by currently available self-exclusion tools.

That’s why they launched the Global Self-Exclusion Initiative, aiming to put things into motion and work towards creating a tool that has the potential to significantly increase player protection on a global level.

Simon Vincze, the manager of Casino Guru’s responsible gambling projects, leads their efforts in this area. He explains the reasoning behind the initiative: “Self-exclusion is one of the most effective tools to reduce gambling-related harm caused to vulnerable players. It allows players to block their access to gambling and therefore limit the negative impact of it on their lives. However, the effectiveness of self-exclusion is limited because of the scope of current options.”

According to Simon, the main drawback of current self-exclusion options is the fact that they can be circumvented by playing in a different casino or by looking for foreign operators that don’t have to comply with nation-wide schemes available in the player’s country. For this reason, he believes that current self-exclusion options are not an effective tool in blocking addicted players’ access to online gambling.

He believes that a global system could help fix these shortcomings: “If there was a truly global system in place, players would have an effective tool that could stop them from playing despite their efforts to circumvent the system when feeling cravings to start gambling again.”

Displaying ads to self-excluded players is also part of the issue. No gambling ads or promotional materials should be displayed or sent to players that have decided to exclude themselves from gambling activities. However, according to Simon, the closedness of the systems currently in place limits their effectiveness in this regard.

He also added that continuous help should be a much bigger part of self-exclusion: “…we feel that self-excluded players could benefit from a closer cooperation with problem gambling help and prevention centers, helping them overcome problem gambling or reduce gambling-related harm more than self-exclusion alone can.”

Casino Guru aims to create a reliable global self-exclusion system that allows people to exclude from all online gambling opportunities at once, on a global level. They also hope to be able to prove excluded players with resources and help they need to address the underlying issue of their addiction to increase their chances of a full recovery. Their goal is to create a system that becomes an industry standard, similar to that of gambling only being available to people that are at least 18 years old.

That said, they realise that they will not be able to do it alone. “We launched this initiative, because we knew that we would never be able to achieve something like this alone. Successfully carrying out such an ambitious project requires cooperation of multiple and varied members of the gambling industry,” Simon added.

For this reason, the first phase of the initiative will focus on spreading awareness of the issue and collecting feedback from the public and predominantly from industry professionals. Simon and the entire Casino Guru team hope to gain valuable feedback about the best way to implement such a system, as well as the effectiveness and feasibility of it all.

Casino Guru invites members of the gambling industry interested to join the initiative, discuss anything related to responsible gambling, or learn more about the goals of the initiative to reach out.