A whole lot has been written about the honesty of land-based slot machines. A fantastic article by Steve Bourie is titled, “Are Slot Machines Honest?” and originally appeared within the 1999 American Casino Guide. (It may be found online by searching for the title in Google or Yahoo!.) Physical, land-based slot machines have a great deal of “variations” (being polite) than can deceive the player. Bear in mind, they’re all illegal and don’t happen. But read the article, closely.
On the contrary, online casino slots use an electronic “random number generator” or RNG, operating inside an extremely large computer program that manages the game graphics, the player accounts of individuals who join the game, the statistics of every hand played, and much more. The random number generator is hard-coded software instructions that do not change. There is absolutely no “sense switch” (see the Bourie article) that can be flipped to give players worse odds. Regarding control parameters, each use of the RNG matches the very last use, and also will be the exact same as the next use. The numbers will come out randomly, however the pattern of randomness never changes. This really is a true benefit from software-based online casino slots.
Land-based slot machines may also have payout percentages as low as 83%, which just isn’t true with online casino slots. In online gaming, each machine has the same winning percentage as another machines. You may see the payout percentages for many online gaming sites, and you shall see which it rarely drops below 95% – which is, the house makes a 5% profit, on a normal. In fact, most casinos can document that their payout percentages are within the 97% – 98% range. Consequently you may spend per hour, gamble your $100 stake about three times, and on the normal it shall cost you $7.50. But players don’t gamble to be average: the true reward is the well-paying win. And also the well-paying win is balanced, as always, by a number of players who lose and finance that win.
So are online slot agent casino slots fair? Yes, they clearly are. The software that operates the games is tested regularly by independent testing laboratories (look for logos at the bottom of the casino website), and no game is individually controllable to be biased. That is a far cry from the specific situation with land-based slot machines, appropriately called “one-armed bandits”.
Players improve odds, they get absolute consistency across all games – but no one can guarantee a win every time. That is just the nature of gambling, and that is a component of the thrill.