Playing within reason

What backs it up

Seven tables and no more. The Sensor Room closes at one in the morning and the bar half an hour before. No credit is given and there's no cash machine in the building. It opens five evenings a week; Monday and Tuesday stay dark.

Age and documents

18 and over, under Article 72 of the Swiss Federal Act on Gambling. A passport, identity card or photo driving licence is shown at the door on every visit, including a second visit the same evening.

Ask, and staff will

• Keep to a limit you name before you sit down, written on a card.
• Tell you the time, every time you ask.
• Hold your seat for twenty minutes while you go up for air.
• Turn you away for a few days, if that's what you ask for.
• Arrange self-exclusion at the desk, starting that same evening.

None of this can be done on the website, and that's deliberate. Each one is a conversation with someone who can see your face and will remember it tomorrow.

Signs worth noticing in yourself

• You're thinking about the tables while you ski the lake trail you came all this way for.
• You've moved dinner to the late sitting so you can be downstairs at eight.
• You go back down after saying goodnight at the desk.
• You count the evenings left in your stay by the room's opening days.
• You'd rather not tell the person you came with how the evening went.

Training, and how to ask

Everyone who works downstairs, and everyone on the desk, spends two days on this before a first shift and goes over it again each December before the season starts.

To ask for any of the above, speak to whoever is at the door or at the desk. You don't need a reason, and nobody will ask for one.

Last reviewed: 4 November 2026