Free and anonymous
Linha 1414: the body changed its name, the line stayed the same
The number is 1414, it answers Monday to Friday between 10 and 18, the call is free and the service is anonymous. The body that runs it stopped being called SICAD in 2023.
The number is 1414, the hours are weekdays from 10 to 18, the call is free and the service is anonymous. An email address stands beside it, [email protected], for anyone who prefers writing to phoning.
Who is on the other end
The line is run by ICAD, the Instituto para os Comportamentos Aditivos e as Dependências, I.P., a body of the Portuguese Ministry of Health. Gambling falls inside its remit directly, alongside substances, rather than as an appendix.
Historically this line was known as Linha Vida.
The number, the hours and the email address were read directly on the ICAD page, and the SRIJ player-support page was consulted the same day; the date of reading appears in the captions of the screenshots. Both pages describe service outside working days in zero terms. So we avoid writing here that the line answers around the clock, a claim that appears often elsewhere: somebody phoning on a Sunday may go unanswered, and knowing that beforehand helps.
Two consequences of its being a public health service rather than an operator’s service. First: whoever answers has anything to sell in no degree, and an account to open for nobody. Second: anonymity is the operating rule rather than a courtesy — identifying yourself to start the conversation is unnecessary.
Linha 1414 is free, anonymous and answers on weekdays from 10 to 18. It is run by ICAD, the Instituto para os Comportamentos Aditivos e as Dependências, created by Decreto-Lei n.º 89/2023 as successor to SICAD.
The name that changed and still gets printed wrong
SICAD stopped existing under that name. ICAD was created by Decreto-Lei n.º 89/2023 and succeeded it.
This matters for a practical reason: the player-support page of the Serviço de Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos itself already points at ICAD, while a good share of Portuguese-language texts about gambling still writes SICAD, sometimes with old addresses attached. Those addresses partly still respond, and the correct name of the body is ICAD, which is the one to look for.
A reservation from our side: we failed to open the old SICAD site, whose connection dropped, so we describe what stands there in no way. We write what we read.
What the line does and what it leaves undone
It provides support and referral on addictive behaviours, gambling included, free of charge and anonymously.
The self-exclusion channel runs elsewhere, and so does the complaints channel about an operator. For those matters the regulator has procedures of its own, which we leave undescribed here because we read them end to end in no case, and phoning a health line replaces or triggers none of them.
The line is also other than an enforcement authority, and it has any bearing on the fine of article 58.º in no degree. They are two separate conversations with separate bodies, and merging them helps nobody: the sanctions side is explained in the player’s fine and the text of the rules sits in what the law says.
We counted 19 holders in this register, all of them on .pt addresses, and a recount on the 2nd returned the same 19 — with 17 sites a player can open, because Moosh has its activity suspended and the Vincino address carries the words «brevemente disponível», available shortly. Portugal publishes no matching list of blocked sites: this closed list is the only one the regulator keeps, and a domain is checked against it.
The complaints door is elsewhere, and it exists on one side only
If the matter is money — a payout that fails to arrive, a blocked account, a condition applied in a way that seems abusive — the counterpart is other than a health line.
On the side of the houses entered on the Portuguese register there is a national authority with published contacts: the SRIJ gives the address [email protected] and the telephone 211 140 200. On the side of houses outside the register an equivalent is absent: the authority that issued the foreign permit has any connection to a player here in no degree, and what remains is the operator’s own support service, governed by documents the operator wrote.
That is the most concrete difference between the two sides, and it is why this site keeps insisting on a list of nineteen names: the 19 entities sit in legal online casinos in Portugal.
If you are reading this because of somebody else
The line answers people who play and it answers people who live with somebody who plays. Anonymity serves both cases, and starting the conversation needs neither a diagnosis nor a figure.
One sign is worth more than any sum: the moment when deciding to deposit stops feeling like a decision. Having lost a specific amount is unnecessary before phoning.
Certainty is unnecessary too. A free, anonymous conversation with people who do this every day is, either way, cheaper than the alternative of waiting for certainty.
On the money side, what exists is documents
A health line settles a payout that fails to arrive in no measure, and we settle it in none either. What this site holds on that subject are clauses with numbers, read in each operator’s terms: the amounts at which three houses ask for papers, the payout ceilings three of them publish, and the silence of the rest on both. All of it sits in best online casino.
What we will leave unwritten here
Anything about getting around a self-exclusion, a verification or a block, in any form, including by implication. That is a fixed rule of this site, and the reason is written in how we read the documents.
We also give clinical and legal advice in zero measure. We give article numbers, clause numbers and the telephone number above, and every one of them can be checked at source by whoever reads it.