A whole lot has been written about the honesty of land-based slot machines. A good article by Steve Bourie is titled, “Are Slot Machines Honest?” and originally appeared in 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 lot of “variations” (being polite) than can deceive the player. Remember, they can be all illegal and do not happen. But read the article, closely.

Conversely, 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 those that join the game, the statistics of every hand played, plus much more. The random number generator is hard-coded software instructions that do not change. There is no “sense switch” (see the Bourie article) that will be flipped to give players worse odds. Regarding control parameters, each use of the RNG matches the final use, and may be the exact same as the next use. The numbers will come out randomly, although the pattern of randomness never changes. This really is a true good thing about software-based online casino slots.

Land-based slot machines also can have payout percentages as little as 83%, which is just not true with online casino slots. In online gaming, each machine has the exact same winning percentage as another machines. You may see the payout percentages for many playing online gambling agency gaming sites, and you shall see that it rarely drops below 95% – that is, the house makes a 5% profit, on an average. Actually, most casinos can document that their payout percentages are within the 97% – 98% range. Consequently you can spend per hour, gamble your $100 stake about three times, and also on the typical it will cost you $7.50. But players don’t gamble to be average: the true reward is the well-paying win. As well as the high-paying win is balanced, remember, by a range of players who lose and finance that win.

So are online 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 matter with land-based slot machines, appropriately called “one-armed bandits”.

Players get better odds, they get absolute consistency across all games – but no one can guarantee a win every time. That’s just the nature of gambling, and that’s included in the thrill.