Kahnawake Gaming Commission beefs up self-exclusion requirements

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission has announced more easily accessibile self-exclusion facilities to assist players who are concerned that their gambling may be getting out of hand.

The Commission’s website was recently revised to include a dedicated self-exclusion page, email address, and on-line form that allows players who want to be excluded from playing on any online gaming website that is licensed and regulated by the Commission to register.

Players who have acknowledged their online gaming activities have become a problem, or may do so, and who wish to either limit their play or to permanently exclude themselves from participating in further online gaming activities may do so in two ways:

• By submitting a request directly to the operator(s) of an online gaming site licensed by the Commission; a player can establish deposit limits – including a “zero” deposit limit – from that particular site. The player’s request has effect upon its receipt by the operator, who is required under the Commission’s licensing to respect the request.

• By submitting a Comprehensive Self-Exclusion Request form (available at http://www.gamingcommission.ca/interactiveplayer_form.asp) or by sending a request to exclusion@gamingcommission.ca. After verifying the player’s request and identity, the Commission will take steps to have the player permanently excluded from all of the online gaming sites that are licensed and regulated by the Commission.

When a self-exclusion request is submitted to the Commission, a Compliance Officer will contact the requesting player to verify his or her information and identity and/or obtain further information to proceed with his or her request.

If the request concerns a specific operator licensed by the Commission, the request will be forwarded to the appropriate operator to be implemented. Once the self-exclusion request has been implemented the operator will notify the requesting player and the Commission with the date upon which implementation was completed.

If the self-exclusion request is in relation to all online gaming sites that are licensed by the Commission, a Comprehensive Self-Exclusion Directive signed by the Commission chairman is emailed to all current licensees with a specific date and time by which all licensees must permanently exclude the requesting player from accessing, depositing funds and from playing on any gaming system that is operated by the licensee and licensed by the Commission.

The Commission will contact the requesting player to confirm, in writing, the date and time at which their self-exclusion request was put into effect.

Players are advised to notify the Commission immediately if any online gaming site licensed by the Commission does not respect the terms of a Comprehensive Self-Exclusion Directive.

The KGC has released its latest statistics on self-exclusion for the period covering January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011:

Thirty-one (31) submissions from players requesting to be self-excluded were received. The breakdowns of the requests are as follows:

• 5 requests pertained to online gambling sites not licensed by the KGC;

• There were 26 validated Self-Exclusion requests, categorized as follows:

• 18 Self-Exclusion directives were issued and forwarded to all licensees of the KGC;

• 5 requests were specific to a single online gambling site and were thus forwarded to the appropriate site and executed by the operator;

• 3 requests are pending due to incomplete information, for which the commission has requested additional details.