responsible play · getting help
Getting help
numbers checked 30 August 2026
If you are in immediate danger, or you are thinking about harming yourself, contact your local emergency number or your doctor rather than a gambling helpline. The services below are for gambling, and they are the right place for almost everything else on this page, but they are not an emergency service.
What happens if you make contact
The hardest part is almost never finding the number. It is not knowing what happens after it rings, so here is that part first.
You do not have to have decided anything
These lines are for people who are not sure, as much as for people who are. "I think I might be playing too much" is a complete reason to call. Nobody is going to ask you to promise to stop.
You do not have to give your name
The services listed here are confidential, and several are explicitly anonymous. You decide how much you say, and you can end the call at any point without explaining why.
It costs nothing
Every number on this page is free to call in its own country. Several also offer chat, and two offer text messaging, which is easier for a lot of people than speaking.
They are used to the beginning
The person answering has had this conversation many times. You will not have to explain poker, or justify how much you lost, or arrive with a plan. Being asked a few questions and hearing what the options are is the whole first step.
Where to go
Help with gambling is organised nationally, so the right place depends on where you live. Every phone number below was read on the site of the organisation itself or on an official government site that publishes it. Where an organisation does not publish its opening hours, no opening hours are claimed here, and where there is no single national number, the entry says so rather than inventing one.
United Kingdom
0808 8020 133
Free and confidential, 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Delivered by GamCare and listed by GambleAware, which also offers a live chat and a WhatsApp adviser. For people in Wales the same page lists an NHS service on 0808 2819 265, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Ireland
1800 936 725
Free and confidential, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Funded by the Gambling Awareness Trust.
United States
National Council on Problem Gambling
1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738)
The National Problem Gambling Helpline, reachable by call, by text on the same number, and by online chat. Its own page does not state opening hours, so none are claimed here.
Canada, Ontario
1-866-531-2600
Free, 24 hours a day, by phone, by live chat, or by texting CONNEX to 247247. This service covers Ontario only. Canada has no single national gambling helpline, because support is organised by province and territory, so look for the service where you live.
Australia, New South Wales
1800 858 858
The Gambling Helpline number as published by GambleAware, a New South Wales government service, which also offers online counselling appointments. Support in Australia is organised state by state.
Meetings, internationally
A fellowship of people who meet, in person and online, in many countries. It is not a helpline and there is no crisis number, so it is listed here by name only, with a meeting finder on its own site. For some people a room of others who have been through it is easier than a phone call.
This list is short on purpose and it is not complete. If you live somewhere it does not cover, look for the national organisation in your own country: the gambling regulator where you live usually names the support services it recognises on its own site, and that is a more reliable starting point than a search result, which on this subject is full of commercial pages.
Two things you can do today, on your own
Neither of these replaces talking to somebody, and both work while you are deciding whether to. A limit is a brake and an exclusion is a lock, and they fail in different ways, which is why each has its own page here.
- Set a deposit or time limit, which most licensed operators apply at once, and read what a limit does not stop.
- Exclude yourself from gambling sites, per country, with how the register that applies where you live actually works.
Whether a national register exists where you are, and what it covers, differs a great deal from country to country. What is available in various markets is set out on where you can play.
If it is someone else
The helplines above are for people around a gambler as well as for gamblers, and you can call about somebody else without them knowing or agreeing to it. That is worth saying plainly, because most people assume the opposite and wait.
Two things that feel helpful usually are not. Taking over someone money rarely changes anything on its own, and taking on their debt almost never does; both tend to remove the consequence without touching the cause. Getting advice first, from people who have this conversation every day, is the step that is genuinely available to you, and it is free.
Why this page exists on a poker site
Pokiq teaches people to play a game in which money can be lost, so a share of the people reading this site are at risk by definition. There is nothing to sign up for on this page and nothing is being sold on it. We take no money from poker rooms and use no affiliate links, which is the only reason a page like this can be written without a conflict.
What training does and does not do, and the signs that it is going wrong, are set out on responsible play. Playing better lowers what you lose on average. It does not make poker safe, and anyone who uses training as a reason to play higher or for longer has turned the point of it upside down.