Play should cost you an evening, not a fortnight

Australian support, free and independent

These services are not run by us, do not report to us and will never try to talk you back onto the site. Every one of them is free.

The controls on your own account

Five tools sit in the cashier under Responsible Gaming. They apply the moment you set them and cannot be talked around by support, by a bonus offer or by a VIP host.

A limit is worth setting before you need it

The best time to decide what an evening is allowed to cost is before the evening starts. Set the deposit limit at the figure you would be comfortable telling someone about, and let it do the arguing for you later.

Signs worth taking seriously

Gambling harm rarely announces itself. It arrives as a series of small changes that each look reasonable on their own. If several of these describe your last few months, it is worth a conversation with someone on 1800 858 858.

• Playing longer than you meant to, more often than you meant to.
• Depositing again after telling yourself the session was finished.
• Chasing a loss — increasing stakes to win back what has already gone.
• Borrowing to play, or playing with money set aside for rent, bills or groceries.
• Being vague or untruthful with people close to you about how much you play.
• Feeling irritable, flat or anxious on days you do not play.
• Letting work, sleep, study or family slide to make room for it.
• Thinking about the next session while you are meant to be doing something else.

None of these means you have a gambling problem. Several of them together means it is worth asking, and asking early is the cheapest thing you will ever do about it.

Four questions, answered honestly

This is not a diagnostic tool and we are not clinicians. It is four questions people find useful to sit with.

1. If your account balance went to zero tonight, would tomorrow be difficult in a practical way — a bill, a rent payment, a debt?
2. Does anyone in your life know accurately how much you play and how much it costs?
3. When you last set out to stop for the evening, did you stop?
4. Would you be comfortable if the person whose opinion you value most could see your last month of deposits?

If any of those landed badly, that is information, not a verdict. Take it to a counsellor on 1800 858 858 — the call is free and they have heard every version of it.

Self-exclusion, ours and national

Excluding from Mickey9 closes this account. Registering with BetStop closes the door at every licensed Australian online operator at once. If you are taking the step at all, take the national one — it is the version that actually holds.

Excluding from Mickey9

1. Open live chat, or send the online form, and say that you want to self-exclude.
2. Choose a term: six months, one year, five years or permanent.
3. Withdraw your balance. Anything left is returned to you — we do not keep it.
4. Access closes immediately. Marketing stops, and any new account we detect under your details is closed on sight.

Registering with BetStop

1. Go to betstop.gov.au and start a registration.
2. Verify your identity with a driver licence, passport or Medicare card.
3. Choose a minimum term from three months up to a lifetime.
4. Every licensed Australian online wagering operator is required to block you for that term. It cannot be shortened once set.

Keeping under-18s out

Every account is age-verified at registration and verified again before a first withdrawal. An account found to belong to a minor is closed, deposits are returned and winnings are void.

If you share a device, the practical measures matter more than the policy:

• Never save the password in a browser other people use.
• Log out rather than closing the tab.
• Use device-level parental controls — Screen Time on iOS, Family Link on Android.
• Consider filtering software such as Net Nanny or Qustodio if a young person uses the same computer.

If you are worried about someone else

Living with someone else's gambling is its own kind of difficult, and the support services above take calls from family and friends as readily as from players. You do not need permission and you do not need the full picture to ring 1800 858 858.

• Pick a calm moment. The conversation goes nowhere mid-session or straight after a loss.
• Describe what you have seen, not what you have concluded. "You have been up until three most nights this week" travels further than "you have a problem".
• Protect yourself financially. Separate accounts, and no lending. Covering a loss removes the consequence that makes change feel necessary.
• Get your own support. Gambling Help Online counsels affected family members, free, on the same number.

If you believe someone holds a Mickey9 account they should not, contact us. We cannot discuss another adult's account with you, but we can act on what you tell us.

How the maths actually works

Being straight about this is part of running the site properly. Every game in our lobby carries a built-in margin, and across the 2,945 titles the average return to player is 96.5%. That figure is a long-run statistic measured over millions of spins, not a promise about your session.

• Results are independent. A slot has no memory. Twenty losing spins do not make the twenty-first more likely to pay.
• There is no due machine. Certified random number generators produce each outcome fresh, which is exactly why studios are independently tested.
• Systems do not beat a house edge. Doubling after a loss changes the shape of your results, never the expected value.
• The margin is the point. We are transparent about it because a player who understands it plays with money they can afford to lose.