While gambling, you may have heard of the term reality checks. If you’ve been on a site, you may have seen these or given the option to add them to your account. But what are reality checks? They are one of many measures added by the UK Gambling Commission in a bid to prevent problem gambling and a way of helping people stay in control.
The industry are doing all they can to support those who need it, and through reality checks, they are doing that by looking after those who bet for long periods of time.
One of the most common areas you will see a reality check come into play is on casino gaming or bingo platforms, while people are playing games, they are engrossed in. The reality check is a reminder for players to tell them how long they have been playing during a particular session, whether that is playing bingo games or trying casino titles.
How Does a Reality Check Work?
A reality check is something that comes up on your screen as a player. This details how long you have been playing and is designed for those who have lost track of time and don’t realise how long they have been sitting playing.
When the reality check is on the screen, you have two options. The first is to stop playing at this point, read the message and decide that you have played enough and want to stop. Or secondly, you can choose to dismiss the message and carry on playing where you were.
What Do Customers See with a Reality Check?
If you’ve never seen a reality check while playing online before, then here is what you can expect to see when you come across this.
First of all, the reality check is presented as a message on your screen. This is a pop-up, which must be acknowledged and pressed on before you are able to continue playing. So, from the moment the reality check is shown, you need to make a decision about your gaming.
There are two options, as said above, to dismiss the message and keep playing or to take a break and stop gaming. If you choose to keep playing, then you will be put back in the game you were already playing, there is no need to go and find the game again, you can just simply carry on.
The reason this is done as a pop-up, and with the need to make a decision and action that, is to take you away from the gaming mindset. This is the point where people do sometimes lose concentration on other things, and their focus on the game means they don’t realise how long they have been playing.
Understanding Reality Checks
If you are looking to learn more about reality checks, then here are some of the key points around them, how they work, when they work, and how you can set up your own rules around the reality checks you have on your account.
When you see reality checks
You will only ever see a reality check appear on your screen when you are playing games that have real money stakes. Free games, free spins and bets, and other things such as those will not have a reality check message shown if you are playing for a long time.
This is because the reality check message will appear on the screen when you place a bet, if you are playing free games, then you will not be placing bets for the message to appear.
How are reality checks applied?
When you have a reality check applied to your gaming, it is done so per the gaming session you are currently in. This means your overall betting picture is not looked at in any kind of way. You could be betting in a normal way, but a reality check will still be shown.
A session is where you bet on games in the casino section of a site or any other games section, or you play bingo. Your session can go across all of these different types if you use them all unless you are playing poker. This game is managed separately from the others, on its own entity.
Creating your own reality check rules
It is possible to go into your account settings and create your own reality check rules. One crucial point here is that the rules will only come in when you log out and log back in on your device, so if you want them in straight away, set them up, then log out straight away.
This allows you to control your own reality check and do something that you feel will benefit you more than the standard rules that are in place for everyone.