Responsible gambling

By Alex Thornton · author of the MIT-licensed teachersbettextbook library · Last reviewed 9 August 2026

This site is a calculator. It takes no bets and holds no money. None of that makes gambling safe. If it has stopped being fun, help is free, confidential and answered right now. The numbers are directly below.

The signs clinicians look for

Gambling disorder has a formal medical definition. What follows is the plain-language version of it. They are questions, not a verdict. One “yes” is not a diagnosis and a website cannot make one either way. A clinician does that.

• Needing to bet more money to get the same excitement.
• Restless or irritable when trying to cut back.
• Repeated attempts to cut back or stop that did not hold.
• Preoccupied: replaying old bets, planning the next one, working out where the money comes from.
• Betting when you feel bad, rather than when you feel like it.
• Chasing: going back another day to win the losses back.
• Lying to people about how much you bet.
• A relationship, a job, or an opportunity put at risk by it.
• Relying on someone else for money to cover what gambling cost.

That list is the substance of the criteria in the DSM-5, the manual US clinicians diagnose from. If several of them land, the helpline numbers above are staffed by people whose whole job is that conversation.

Self-exclusion, limits and blocking

Self-exclusion is a ban you put on yourself. Unlike a promise, somebody else enforces it.

• Operator-level. Inside a licensed sportsbook’s account settings, usually next to deposit, loss, wager and time limits and a cool-off period. It covers that operator.
• State-level. Run by the state gaming regulator. One form can cover every licensed operator in that state at once, for a fixed term or for life. NCPG’s help and treatment page is the place to find the programme where you live.
• Device-level. BetBlocker (free, run by a registered charity) and Gamban (paid) block gambling sites and apps across a device.
• Bank-level. Some banks and card issuers can block gambling transactions on a card. It is worth asking yours whether they do.

Teacher’s Bet cannot exclude you from anything, because it holds no betting account, no balance and no bet. Self-exclusion has to happen where your money is. What this site can do is stay out of the way: you can use the calculators, the course and the board with no account at all, and the account that does exist here signs you in and stores your Report Card. It holds no funds and places nothing. There is no leaderboard, and no notification unless you switch one on. One thing to name rather than bury: a signed-in account does count the days you visit, as a streak. Missing a day takes nothing away and costs nothing, because the count is derived from the days already recorded and never edited downward, but if a streak is the kind of thing that pulls you back to a screen, it is better that you heard it here. The site also keeps one word saying which link first brought you here, along with the page you landed on and roughly when, which is how we tell whether writing something was worth the time. It is not a record of what you do here, and there is nothing in it that describes you. The privacy page sets out exactly what it holds.

Clearing site data in your browser deletes everything stored on your device. If you have signed in, or left an address on the pre-launch list, an account row and an email address also exist on the server. The privacy page lists what is held and how to have it deleted.

What the math does not do

This site makes prices readable. That is a narrow thing, and the limits of it matter.

A fair price is an estimate of a probability, not a forecast of a result. Expected value is a long-run average over many repetitions, not a statement about the next one. And when the inputs contain no edge, every calculator here prints $0 rather than rounding up into something that looks actionable. The honest zero is a product rule, not a mood.

The number most tools never show you is how ordinary a long losing run is with a real edge in hand:

Two uncomfortable consequences. Results in the hundreds of bets say almost nothing about skill. And a bettor who reads a downswing as a signal to bet bigger is fooled by the same arithmetic that made the downswing ordinary.

That is why the sizing tools here default to half Kelly rather than full. The derivation is on the Kelly criterion page: growth goes to zero at double the Kelly stake even when the edge is real.

No calculation removes risk. A better price is still a price on an uncertain event, and precision about an edge is not protection from it.

Who this site is for

Adults. The standing policy is 21 or older, and where the legal betting age where you live is higher than that, the higher number applies.

Before the live board can be used, the app shows a full-screen notice: what the site is, what it refuses to do, and one confirmation that you are of legal betting age. Confirming stores a single value in your browser and sends nothing anywhere.

No date of birth is collected and no identity check is performed: the site holds no funds and processes no wager, so it has nothing to verify you against. That is an honest gate, not a barrier: it will not stop anyone determined to click through it.

If you are under the legal age where you live, none of this site is for you, the calculators included.

What this site will not do to you

Stated flatly, because a good deal of this industry does the opposite:

• No picks and no advice. No page here says “bet this.” Every output is arithmetic on inputs you supplied or on prices a venue posted, with the derivation shown.
• No sportsbook money, no paid placement. Not one link on this site pays anyone when a bet is placed; the only outbound venue link anywhere on it is a citation of Kalshi’s published fee schedule. No book pays to appear here.
• No engagement machinery. No streaks, no daily-login rewards, no leaderboards, no push to come back. The one alert in the app is opt-in and ships switched off, and what it flags is a calculation, never an instruction.
• No testimonials, ratings or user counts, anywhere, because none of them would be real.
• No guarantee of an outcome, on any tier, at any price. Nothing can honestly offer that.

If it is someone else’s gambling

The helplines above take calls from family members too, and that is a large share of what they handle. Two peer-support organisations run free meetings in most US states and online:

• Gamblers Anonymous: for the person gambling.
• Gam-Anon: for partners, family and friends.
• National Council on Problem Gambling: treatment listings, state programmes, and resources written for family members.

The contact inbox here is not a support channel for gambling harm, and it would be a disservice to pretend otherwise. It is a calculator company answering mail about arithmetic. The numbers at the top of this page are staffed by people trained for this.