Responsible Gambling Project

In 2021, we launched the Responsible Gambling self-regulation Project with the aim of promoting prevention, preventing the development of pathological gambling, implementing early detection of risky gambling, and effectively addressing the needs of players who have lost control over their gambling.

The project involves four major operators: FORTUNA GAME a.s., CHANCE a.s., SAZKA a.s., and Tipsport.net a.s., who have committed to following 29 obligations beyond the legal requirements in areas such as strengthening player protection, prevention, employee education, and responsible marketing and advertising.

Together, we are working on a unique tool that will promptly detect risky behavior in players (IRIS). The uniqueness of our solution lies in its ability not only to recognize when a player begins to gamble riskily and immediately alert the player, but also that the same tool and rules will function across all participating operators. This approach ensures consistent player protection regardless of where they play.

It is crucial to identify risky players, but equally important is knowing how to communicate effectively with such players and how to help them. Therefore, we conduct training for the employees of operators as well as for at-risk groups.


IRIS

IRIS is a modern tool to make gambling safer for gamblers. It performs in-depth analyses
of individual players' gambling behaviour and can warn them in time if their gambling
becomes risky.

From 1 January 2017, legal gambling operators in the Czech Republic must register any player who wants to play in a land-based gambling room, casino or online. At the same time, gambling operators are legally obliged to collect an enormous amount of gaming data, which is then sent in data packets to the Ministry of Finance at 8-hour intervals, in accordance with Decree No. 10/2019 Coll., on Gambling Reporting (the "Reporting Decree").

IRIS tracks so-called Markers of Risky Gambling Behaviour in this data, such as the amount of money invested in the game, the frequency of depositing it into the player's account or the time spent gambling, what time of day the player plays, etc. Based on these factors, it is able to categorise gamblers into risk groups and at the same time it is able to recognise the first symptoms of risky behaviour. That is, the point at which a gambler's gambling stops being fun and turns risky.

IRIS will evaluate if players are not in control of the game. It will alert them that their game activity has increased, they will be given a comparison with the average of other players and the system will also provide them with instructions on how to deal with the situation.

IRIS will be able to send alerts to players such as "Did you know you spend 6 hours more than the average player per day playing?" or "Did you know you play more than a third of the day?"

We have currently developed a scoring classification model, for which we are now developing a complex server application so that we can validate the model's features on a sufficiently large sample of data. At the same time, we are preparing the intervention communication and legalities of distributed deployment to individual providers.

Regulation now offers players a number of tools to protect themselves from risky gambling (limits, registration on the Exclusion Register, mandatory breaks, etc.). However, the pitfall of the legal measures is that they assume that all players are the same. But players are all different, so blanket measures affect them differently.

However, IRIS is the only tool that looks at the issue comprehensively and from a player's perspective. This is the only way to identify or alert problem players early and offer them the best possible help. In Europe, similar systems already exist at the level of a single operator. However, what makes IRIS unique is that it aims to be an inter-operator system. In such a case, gambling operators would send anonymised gambling data to a single point which would evaluate it on the basis of the same criteria and send all participating operators the same information about which group a player is in. This would be followed by a single intervention and all subsequent steps. The indisputable advantage of this solution is that the player will have the same playing history with all participating operators and will be evaluated comprehensively as a whole. There will be no distortion of a player's playing behaviour by taking a break and going to play for another operator.

Players need not worry, no personal player data will be shared across operators, only anonymised game data. And this is under a single player identifier assigned to them under the relevant reporting ordinance and used to report gaming history to the state. This identifier may be further encrypted.

Without an across-the-board obligation to identify high-risk players, there will always be "stowaways" in the market who will take advantage of high-risk player tourism at a vulnerable point when responsible operators stop offering them bonuses and start encouraging them to set healthy limits or other measures to keep their gambling under control.

IRIS will offer a wide range of intervention tools. These will include:

  • Warning about increased game activity with comparison to average players.
  • Recommendations for setting personal limits on time and money invested in gaming.
  • Information on self-regulation options such as setting limits or temporary self-
    exclusion.
  • Guidance on how to seek professional help (e.g. links to contacts of organisations
    working on addiction prevention).

Helpline

We offer you assistance in the following areas:

Addiction services – prevention and treatment of gambling addiction. Citizens' advice – family counselling, financial counselling including debt issues.


The Responsible Gambling Project Expert Council

The project is overseen by an expert advisory board - an independent, consultative and advisory body composed of renowned experts with different backgrounds and expertise in the fields of addictionology, psychology and economics to help in the effective development of prevention and mitigation of the impact of risky gambling on gamblers. The Responsible Gambling Project Expert Council consists of a chairman and six ordinary menbers.

 
  • PhDr. Ladislav Csémy
    PhDr. Ladislav Csémy

    Member of the Expert Council

    Head of Research Program at the National Institute of Mental Health

    A psychologist whose professional interests include psychological and socio-medical aspects of addictive behavior, psychiatric epidemiology, and health psychology. He has published articles in international and domestic professional journals, co-authored more than ten monographs, and participated in many collaborative research studies.

  • Ing. Aleš Rod, Ph.D.
    Ing. Aleš Rod, Ph.D.

    Member of the Expert Council

    Director of Research at CETA-Centre for Economic and Market Analysis, z. ú.

    Economist, entrepreneur and university lecturer. At the Center for Economic and Market Analysis (CETA), he manages research projects, consults on strategic plans for the public and private sectors in the Czech Republic and abroad. He is also a new member of the National Economic Council of the Government (NERV).

  • PhDr. Eva Aigelová, Ph.D.
    PhDr. Eva Aigelová, Ph.D.

    Member of the Expert Council

    Psychologist, Secretary of the Department of Psychology at Palacký University in Olomouc

    Assistant Professor and Secretary of the Department of Psychology at UPOL. She has a long-standing interest in the issues of substance and non-substance addictions.

  • Bc. Marcel Ambrož
    Bc. Marcel Ambrož

    Member of the Expert Council

    Head of the SANANIM z.ú ambulance

    He has been working in the field of gambling since 2015, when the Gambling Ambulance was founded. In addition to individual and group therapy, his practice focuses more on the issue of odds betting among the clinic's clients, especially athletes.

  • Mgr. Lukáš Carlos Hrubý
    Mgr. Lukáš Carlos Hrubý

    Member of the Expert Council

    Specialist Director at Podané ruce o.p.s

    Psychologist, working as a therapist, supervisor and lecturer. Professional director of the Podané ruce o.p.s. company in the Olomouc and Zlín regions. Founder and director of the Mana, o.p.s. company in Olomouc. He has his own psychotherapeutic practice focused primarily on working with gamblers and couples therapy. In his lecturer activities, he focuses primarily on crisis intervention and the issue of pathological gambling.

  • Bc. František Trantina
    Bc. František Trantina

    Member of the Expert Council

    Addiction specialist, 1st Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and General Hospital in Prague

    An addiction specialist working at the 2nd Internal Medicine Clinic of the General Hospital. He is the guarantor of the gambling section at the Czech Association of Addiction Specialists and leads a treatment group for pathological gamblers at the Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital.

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