For an assortment of would-be gamblers, the number-one thing holding them back from depositing with an online casino is the idea of fairness. There is a misconception about online gambling, that has pretty much transformed itself into a meme, and that’s that online casinos are not fair and will simply rig the game in order to steal your money. Is this true about online casinos?
The answer is more nuanced than you may realize. It’s basically yes and no, but context is imperative in understanding each end of the dichotomy. For instance, understand that the Internet is infinite, and that any company that can get a license has the freedom to open a casino. This has led to some unfair casinos popping up, whose business model basically revolved around gouging customers in different ways.
However, these are the exception and not the rule. By and large, online casinos are legitimate businesses, and many are even publicly traded companies. It is in their best interest to offer fair games, and most do. Some are obviously better rated than others, but the majority are fair.
How are they able to provide a fair atmosphere via the Internet? That’s a whole other topic.
The Measures Taken By Online Casinos to Ensure Fair Play
Many people consider casinos to be inherently unfair to begin with, whether speaking about Vegas or the Internet. This is because the house’s advantage is ever present in any game of chance. The only reprieve you get from this fact is with games like poker. But blackjack, roulette, slots, craps, etc; these games all grant an advantage to the house. If you can live with that, you can find many casinos online that offer fair-play otherwise, and they do so primarily with random number generators (RNG software).
An RNG is basically a software program that is designed to randomly generate numbers, symbols, graphics, etc, without any pattern whatever. So, with a classic 52-card deck, an RNG can shuffle and deal out randomly an infinite number of times. With today’s quality RNGs that use billions upon billions of variables, it is a literal impossibility to predict with any certainty what the next card(s) will be.
Even if a casino was shoddy and did the unthinkable by rigging the RNG software, it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Keen-eyed gamblers would be able to easily spot patterns in the algorithm; and once you find a pattern in a random number generator, you’ve found a piece of software that is not functioning as an RNG should.
In the earliest days of RNG software, primarily with online poker sites, hackers developed adjustable variable algorithms that could run alongside the site’s RNGs and basically mimic the generation. This led to a very short-lived boom of poker cheaters who were able to predict accurately the cards of the dealer and other players at these sites.
Of course, these sorts of programs have long been useless, as RNGs have really evolved and have become impossible to crack. Each new deal is one of billions of variables, which leads to one of billions of combos, which leaves you looking at a system that is, for all intents and purposes, infinite in its randomness.
Alternatives To RNG Software Casinos
If you are the type of gambler that trusts a live dealer over RNG software, then you also have that option with many reputable casinos today. Rather than playing with a piece of software that deals out randomly the cards you play with, you can enjoy the benefits of a live dealer, just as you would find in any live casino. Being able to monitor the actual person dealing out the game is a more soothing, comfortable way to gamble for many. If there’s any shady activity, you have a live person to gauge, not a piece of software to figure out.
Remember that casinos are businesses. The biggest and best have shareholders and stock prices. Even smaller start-ups are hoping to achieve that level of success. It is simply not in a casino’s best interests to cheat you out of money. The majority you find offer fair play, and the ones you find through Legitimate Casinos are guaranteed not to scam you.
As a matter of fact, we have confirmed that every single casino listed on our website either has a page that talks about “Fair Gaming”, or they have links towards the bottom of the page that offers verifiable proof that their games are playing fair via audits by 3rd party companies.