Responsible Gaming

The house position

The gaming floor upstairs is one room in a sixty-four-room hotel. It opens five evenings a week with a few tables, and most people in the building are here for other reasons, which suits us. Nobody on the staff is paid more for keeping a guest at a table longer. There is no loyalty scheme and there are no free drinks for players, and nothing in the building is designed to make leaving difficult.

Everything described on this page is arranged face to face, by hotel staff, on hotel premises. You don't need to download a form or ring a number, and no third party is involved: you tell a person what you want and they deal with it.

Strictly adults

The legal age in the Netherlands is 18, and photo identification is checked at the door on every visit. It makes no difference whether you are staying in the hotel or are known to the staff, and a photograph of a document on a telephone is not accepted. Anyone who cannot produce a passport, a national identity card or a Dutch driving licence does not come in, and nobody here has ever been disciplined for being too strict about it.

Nobody under 18 may be on the floor for any reason, including crossing it to find somebody.

What the staff can arrange

All of this is organised on the spot, in private and without paperwork. Ask the host at the door or any member of the pit staff.

• A time limit. Tell us the hour you want to stop and the floor will let you know when it arrives, once, and won't argue if you carry on.
• A spending limit. A ceiling for the evening, noted at the door and applied at the tables.
• A break. Leave the floor, keep your seat for twenty minutes, and come back or don't.
• A quiet period. A week, a month or a season during which you would prefer not to be admitted. Give us the dates and we keep to them.
• Confidential self-exclusion. Described below, and arranged at reception.

Staff on the floor set limits of every kind, so ask before you sit down. Table minimums and maximums are posted at each table, and the pit staff will read them out if the light is poor.

Self-exclusion, in person at reception

You arrange self-exclusion in person at the reception desk downstairs, with a member of the duty management team, in an office with the door shut. It takes about ten minutes. You choose a fixed period or leave it open-ended, and you say whether you want to be turned away at the door or not let in at all.

The hotel holds the record, and only the staff who need it to apply it ever see it. It is never mentioned to anybody else, including the people you arrived with, and it never comes up on the floor or at the breakfast table. It applies to the gaming floor only, and you remain welcome in the hotel, the restaurant, the bar and the spa as before.

To end an open-ended exclusion you come back to the same desk in person and ask. It cannot be reversed by email, by telephone or at the door of the floor, and a cooling-off period applies before it lifts.

No credit, no cash machine

The hotel offers no credit of any kind for play, does not cash cheques and will not add gaming to a room account. There is no cash machine on the gaming floor, on the landing outside it or anywhere else in the building. The nearest one is a walk away in the city, in daylight hours, which is intentional.

Signs worth noticing

Most people have their evening and go to bed. Certain patterns are worth catching early, in yourself or in somebody you came with:

• Going back for more than you decided to spend, more than once.
• Playing to win back what you have lost, and no longer for enjoyment.
• Being vague with people close to you about how long you were upstairs.
• Borrowing, selling or rearranging money to keep playing.
• Finding that the rest of the trip has become something to get through until the floor opens.
• Feeling relief on sitting down where you used to feel pleasure.

None of these is a diagnosis, and we are not qualified to give one. They are what our staff are trained to notice, and worth being truthful with yourself about.

How the staff are trained

Everybody who works the floor or the reception desk is trained before their first shift and again every year. The training covers checking documents carefully, recognising the patterns above, approaching somebody without embarrassing them, taking a limit request seriously the first time it is made, and handling a self-exclusion conversation discreetly. Duty managers get a longer version.

Staff are instructed to speak up when they notice something, without waiting to be asked. If a member of staff suggests a break, it is a courtesy and carries no judgement.

How to ask

Tell the host at the door, any dealer or pit staff member on the floor, or the reception desk at any hour. If writing is easier, email [email protected] and ask for the duty manager; the conversation itself still takes place in person at the desk. There is nothing on this website to fill in, because these arrangements are made by people in the building.