Online casino’s not fair?

Yeah, I just went to a real casino yesterday, and at the blackjack table, out of $4000 in bets ($100 chips) I won exactly 4 hands, and the dealer busted only 2 times… Now you tell me where is the Wiz of odds in this situation, when I won a jackpot at an online casino with my bonus money a few years back…
Online casinos (most of them) really do pay according to their pay-out tables.

It frightens me that in a community populated by those professionally involved in the gambling world, there are so many people who still believe the old wives’ tales of ‘non-randomness’, ‘it’s all rigged’ and ‘win/lose switches’.

I thought these were the preserve of the general gambling public, but I guess in an unregulated and still fairly underground industry, there is not enough opportunity for people to learn what they’re selling. Still, I think it’s worrying and rather disappointing.

For example, it appears that some still think that payout percentages are somehow controlled mechanically – as if the casino software will say “The last 100 hands won, so we need some losses to make up the percentages.” This is absolute nonsense and shows a complete lack of understanding on the fundamentals of probability and the principles of casino gambling.

The payout percentages achieved by an online casino game will, in the long run, match those achieved in an equivalent B+M game for one simple reason: the rules of the game combined by the probabilities of the outcomes decide the payout percentage.

Let’s take European Roulette as an example, and look just at the number bets. There are 37 numbers on the wheel – 0-36. If you bet on any of these numbers, you get back 36 times your stake. However your number will only come up one in 37 times on average. This calculates to a house advantage of 2.7% – which is 1/37. I.e., you expect to have to bet 37 times before your number comes up, but when it does you get paid only 36 times back.

That’s it. The software doesn’t have to manipulate or guarantee the payout percentage, it’s inherant in the mathematics of the game. On a real roulette wheel, any given number will come up 1/37 times and pay 36x, therefore the player loses 2.7% on average. In an internet casino, the RNG simply generates a random number between 0 and 36, of which any given one will come up 1/37 times.

So it’s the rules of the game and the probabilities that control the set payout percentage, not any ‘non-randomness’ or ‘manipulation’ on the part of the casino software. All their RNG needs to do, in this example, is generate a number between 0-36 and be random enough such that each of those numbers will come up, on average, in the long run, 1/37 times. I can assure you that every reputable software provider today is capable of doing that with no problem at all. In fact their RNGs are likely much more random and unpredictable than a real roulette wheel, which can occasionally suffer from bias as a result of wear and tear, or because of the technique of the croupier.

Every gambler has stories about the time he lost 70 out of 100 hands, or won 70 out of 100. Yeah it’s really frustrating (or really amazing, depending on which yet get), but it means nothing. This table shows some probabilities:
http://wizardofodds.com/blackjack/appendix4.html

So for example, after 100 bets the probability of being down 43 bets is 0.01%. It happens one in 10,000 times. So when it happens to you, you’ll feel pretty pissed off. But if there’s 10,000 people playing Blackjack right now online, it’s almost certainly going to happen to one of them. And if that guy keeps playing for a long time, there will likely be another session where he wins 43 bets out of 100 hands. You can extrapolate this further of course – the example Stupid gave sounded incredibly unlucky, perhaps 1 in a million. Sucks if it happens to you, but you’re not the first and you certainly won’t be the last, and it indicates nothing other than the laws of probability.

I’m really surprised at the affiliates here who believed all the nonsense about it being non-random or rigged, and yet continue to promote casinos. That just seems dishonest – you think the product is flawed but you sell it anyway.

The simple fact tho is that no casino needs to cheat. Their profitability is built into every game they offer, it’s mathematically guaranteed that they will profit over the long term and usually the short term too. Casinos worldwide made millions before RNGs even existed, and they will continue to do so as long as people want to gamble at games with a house advantage.

I agree – most online casinos do not mess with the software – pretty much any made by the 3 big companies.

However, BM casinos could cheat – I always play blackjack for many reasons – good time at the table mostly, also good bets, etc.

But odds are nothing, simple numbers written down. It usually is all about luck. But with an authomated shoe things are different. I have played BJ long enough to know that at the table things are up and down, up and down, but never a long streak of each.
And if we talk about odds, there are a few other things – many people realise their “luck changes” each time the dealer “goes on break” – speaking about odds -impossible, in reality – true.
Another thing I have been keeping my eyes open for a while – every time you get an Ace as a first card and the dealer knocks on your spot “for good luck” – 8 out of 10 times you will not get a blackjack. When I ask the dealer to stop doing that – it’s 1 out of 3 (I just seem not to be getting Aces as often). It’s the same thing if the dealer anounces “table max”.
I dont think odds mean anything because mathematically they will change as you change the time span for calculating them, and in real life they never work as they “should”

Let me just clarify that I do not go to the casino to win – it’s just fun, and you can meet some caracters there you’d never have the chance to meet anywhere else, but at that night, at that particular table – nobody had fun

The fact is that I played at that table sometimes alone, sometimes with other people, and the dealer still busted only 2 times – it’s just real live impossible unless it’s messed with. And EVERY time I got an Ace or 11 – the dealer had a blackjack – EVERY time…

That’s why I recommend now more than ever people playing online if they want to win money.

I’m with howardmoon.

Heck, we all watch the winning and losing all the time in our stats. I see plenty of winners, big and small, every month.