Cooling-Off Period

A cooling-off period, sometimes called a time-out, lets a player suspend access for a defined stretch, commonly from 24 hours up to several weeks. During the break the account cannot be used for gambling, and in most implementations marketing must also stop. It is deliberately lighter-touch than self-exclusion, which runs for months or years and is often enforced across every operator in a market through a central register.

The same mechanism appears in a second, important place: as a delay on increasing limits. Requiring a waiting period before a higher deposit or loss limit takes effect, while allowing reductions immediately, is what stops a control being dismantled in the heat of a session. Many regulators mandate both forms, and the availability and prominence of time-out tools is a standard item in compliance assessments and in licence-condition reviews.