The session ends.
The block does not.
Fold'em blocks gambling on the iPhone a person carries home, and hands the key to someone they choose. We can arrange it for a treatment service, a charity, a peer group or a workplace program.
Blocked, held, and nothing to administer.
In a group, the person holding the key can be someone else in the group.
- Blocked on the phone they carry
- A key held by someone they choose
- Nothing for you to run
The hard part is the evening after.
Someone leaves a session meaning it and goes home to the same phone, the same apps and the same eleven o'clock. Relapse is the ordinary course rather than the rare one: in one study of 101 people who had just quit gambling, only 8 percent stayed entirely free of it for the next twelve months, and the relapses came most often in the evening, alone.
That is not a failure of the hour in the room. It is what a setting does at that hour, when the only person who can change it is the one holding the phone.
Of 101 people who had just quit gambling, the share who stayed entirely free of it for the next twelve months.
Hodgins and el-Guebaly 2004, Journal of Consulting and Clinical PsychologyThe share of people who broke their own ban, across nineteen studies of land based self exclusion.
Kotter et al. 2019, Journal of Gambling StudiesThe share of people with problem gambling who have ever sought any help at all, family and self help included.
Bijker et al. 2022, AddictionEnding it takes days, not a tap.
On the phone, the betting apps will not open and the sites will not load, in every browser. Ending protection is a request rather than a switch: 48 hours after the person holding the key says yes, and seven days when nobody holds it.
If someone in your group holds the key, their own app shows when protection goes off, when the phone stops confirming, and when protection is ending. What they never see is an app, a site, an amount of money or anything typed, except a note the person adds when they ask to end a Lockdown sooner.
How Fold'em fits a group.
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Peer groups and fellowships
Hold each other's keys
People who already sit in the same room can hold each other's keys. Three people can each be the other two's supporter, so nobody has to ask a family member to take it on.
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Treatment services and clinics
The part that travels home
The block is on the phone they take home, and ending it takes days rather than a tap, whoever holds the key. Nothing about it depends on the next appointment.
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Employers, unions and welfare funds
Offer it, and never learn who took it
There is no roster, no sign up list you can see and no report back. You can offer it to everyone and never know who said yes.
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What you would see
Nothing, by design
There is no administrator dashboard and we are not going to build one. Apple's picker hands the app opaque tokens that never leave the phone, so nobody at Fold'em can read a blocklist and neither can you. If you need compliance reporting, we are the wrong tool.
If you need someone now
Free, and not run by Fold’em.
- Call 1 800 697 3738National Problem Gambling Helpline, US. Call, text or chat.
- Call 1 866 531 2600ConnexOntario, Canada. For people in Ontario.Website for ConnexOntario
- Call 0800 1 37 27 00BZgA Check dein Spiel, GermanyWebsite for BZgA Check dein Spiel
- Call 1800 858 858Gambling Help Online, AustraliaWebsite for Gambling Help Online
- Call 0808 8020 133National Gambling Helpline, UKWebsite for the National Gambling Helpline
- Other countries
Gam-Anon is a community for people supporting someone who gambles.
Tell us about your group.
Roughly how many people, which countries they are in, and who we would talk to. None of it is a commitment, and a person answers within two working days.
Fold'em is made by Boelstad Digital, a company in Norway. It is a commitment device and not a treatment service, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by any fellowship, scheme or clinical body. Apple prices and bills per storefront, so where people are decides what is possible.