Can Online Slots Be Rigged
The answer is no! Slot machines cannot be rigged, especially at the online casinos. The casinos are regularly checked by third-party agencies that ensure their trustworthiness and safe play. To learn more about this topic, please visit the designated section. Irrespective of how enticing the bonus spins, jackpot slots, and free spins are, playing at slots in an online casino without a license is a bad thing to do. The chances are that their slot machines are fully rigged to prevent players from winning. The slot machines featured on reputable online casino sites are not rigged. Slots' random number generators (RNG) ensure there is no 'machine memory' of previous spins as they are programmed to function on individual spins. Are Online Slots Rigged? There's no doubt losing can be frustrating, especially if it happens repeatedly. If you can't seem to win at online slots, it's easy to play the blame game. Since there's no skill required to spin the reels, most people assume that losing can't possibly be their fault.
The first thing a losing customer will say is that the slot machine is rigged, whether it is at a land-based casino or at an online gambling center. We tend to make ourselves victims of injustice more often than never, especially if we don’t understand how some things work and don’t have either the time or the will to investigate.
This happens to be the situation with online slots and some people thinking they are, in fact, rigged. Skepticism is not always bad, it is like a form of a precaution, and fully understandable when it comes to gambling with real money. But let’s see why the theory about rigged online slot machines doesn’t have any substantial arguments to support it.
Mechanics made way for electronics
Slot machines are still experienced as machines, even though computer software was taken over and altered slot technology. Sure, slot machines were simpler in the past, you pull the lever and hear the cogwheels tuning inside, but past is the past. Nowadays, software stands behind both land-based machines and online slots, so they pretty much work the same way.
If you think online slots can be computer programmed to make players loose, well then the same logic can be applied to brick and mortar slots, as you are playing all the same games but channeling them through a different device. However, slot game software can’t be manipulated in that way, due to various reasons – such as constant supervisions and testing.
RNG and regulation
In order to understand how hard it would be to rig online slots, one should know that slot software is operated by an algorithmic computer whose task is to create random combinations through series of random numbers. It is known as Random Number Generator, or simply RNG.
RNG carries out operations following an algorithm of mathematical operations starting from one random number and ending up at a completely different number containing a huge number of digits, them repeating it times on end, making it impossible to predict any future or past actions.
The computer has no input of past spins and every reel combination is random.
You can lose if you’ve lost ten times before, or you could win again if you’ve won big on your last spin – there’s no way to tell.
RNG is in charge of producing randomness, and third party testing companies are there to control fairness of casino games, including online slots.
These companies are independent third parties and their job is to make sure games show random results and meet payout percentage requirements, as in some jurisdiction these are determined by lawful regulations. An example would be Technical Systems Testing (TST).
Apart from this, government bodies like the UK Gambling Commission, Jurisdiction of Gibraltar, the Malta Lotteries and Gaming Authority and others, function like supervisors and impose rules and regulations both software developers and casinos have to meet in order to acquire a respected casino license to operate.
Regulatory agencies provide casinos with proper certification so the players can keep their piece of mind.
Software isn’t bug-free at times
What every customer indulging in services of any type of computer software has to know is the fact that sometimes these things have bugs, and malfunction or crash.
Computers aren’t made by computers, but by humans, and some of these products fail to satisfy users at one point or another.
Such cases are known to happen, for example last month a woman thought she had won almost $43million in a New York casino on a slot machine that had a max payout of $6,500 before the management informed her that the slot was broken and had to be pulled from the casino floor to be fixed.
Similarly, a woman in Oregon thought she had won $8 million, but the casino didn’t pay since it was evident the machine was broken, having a max payout of just $20,000.
These things make customers bitter, but they are by no means signs or rigging. All machines have a stamp on them that says: ‘malfunctions void all pays and plays.’
Something to think about
There is a very good advantage attached to online slots that grounded slot machines lack. We’re talking about the theoretical payout rate, the payout percentage, or simply RTP. This is an official piece of information about a specific slot, being published by the developer or the casino.
RTP is a legitimate indication of the odds of winning when playing a slot. It is expressed in percentages, telling you precisely how much a slot is estimated to pay back to players.
Can Online Slots Be Rigged Game
This means you don’t have to be clairvoyant to know what to expect from a slot, just stick to reputable, licensed casinos and slots with higher RTP.
As you saw in our casino software section, most of the companies publish their official RTP rates, as this is a standard for most European oriented casinos.
For USA players the situation is a bit more difficult since many software companies do not post official data, such as RTG for example. In those cases where official RTP rates are not published, we recommend to search for a third party testing company monitoring that particular online casino. Otherwise, you can check the review section mentioned above, where we recommend the best RTG casinos with instant payouts. And if you are not particularly into RTG slots, then you can go with Rival or BetSoft casinos which publish the payouts of most of their games.
Do you love online gambling games but aren’t sure if the slot machines you adore are rigged? We’re here to dive into the truth about slot machines.
According to a 2010 American Gaming Association report, slot machines generate nearly 70 percent of a casino’s revenue. That is up from 45 percent in 1970.
Casinos love slot machines because they are consistent, popular money makers. But, at least at first glance, players should be suspicious of them for the same reason. Slot machines seem so good for casinos, it makes you wonder: are slot machines rigged?
Can Online Slots Be Rigged Against
The answer is no, and yes. Really, it depends on what you mean by rigged.
Defining Rigged
In order to decide whether slot machines are rigged, we first need to talk about what rigged might mean in this context.
The first version of rigged you probably think of is a game it is impossible to win. That’s the way shady carnival games might be rigged, or the scam version of Three-card Monte where there isn’t actually a Queen.
The good news is slot machines, including online gambling slot games, are not rigged like that. It is absolutely possible for you to win playing. People win all the time, and it would be illegal if you couldn’t.
Now for the bad news: there is a different sense in which slot machines are rigged. Basically, the casino, or house, gets to decide how often people can win.
The House Advantage in Slot Machines
Can Online Slots Be Rigged Free
Casinos (including online casinos) are built to make money and they could not stay in business if people won more money than they lost. So, slot machines are programmed to take in more money than they pay out in the long run.
That doesn’t mean that an individual person cannot win money playing slot machines. Some do.
What it does mean is that if enough people play, the casino will take in more from the losers than it gives to the winners. Likewise, if any individual person plays long enough, they will lose money to the casino.
That is how slot machines are rigged: the house always has a built-in advantage. All casino games have varying house advantages, not just slots.
In slots, this advantage is represented by the return-to-player, or RTP. The RTP represents the percentage of your bet that you can expect to win back. So, if the RTP is 95%, then for every $100 you bet, you can expect to win $95 back. The casino makes its profit on the other $5.
Of course, things won’t follow the RTP perfectly in the short term. You could win more or less than the expected $95, and there are things you can do to help you win at slots. But in the aggregate, when you combine all the games of all the players, the machines will pay out at the RTP.
Can Online Slots Be Rigged Games
The casino is free to program the RTP based on the profit margin they need to stay in business. The RTP varies by machine, but in most cases, online casino gambling games and online slot machines have a more player-friendly RTP. Online casinos don’t have the same overhead, so they don’t need to make as much profit.
How Slot Machines Pick Individual Winners
So, RTP is one sense in which slot machines are rigged over the long term. But, while the casino can control the house advantage, it cannot decide who wins or when.
During an individual game, slot machines determine who wins based on random number generators (RNGs). RNGs are pieces of software that create billions of numbers a second. If the number it spits out happens to match a number associated with a jackpot, then you win.
(Technically, these numbers aren’t really random. Most machines cannot create truly random numbers so they are the result of a series of massively complicated math equations. But, these equations are so complicated that, for any practical purpose, the results are random.)
The RNGs are where all the action really is. The spinning wheels on digital or online slot machines are just for show. When the RNG spits out a winning number, you win a jackpot and then the wheels line up, not the other way around.
The casino can program the RTP, but it cannot manipulate the RNG. There are a range of third-party organizations, like eCOGRA, that make sure that doesn’t happen.
Ways Slot Machines Get You to Play More
Overall, the casino wants you to play as long as possible, since the RTP is only guaranteed to work in the long run. If you hit a big jackpot and then leave, the casino loses money. But if you keep playing, you’ll eventually give it all back.
With that goal in mind, there are a variety of ways slot machines are designed to keep you playing. That is another way you could say the machines are rigged.
Hiding the True Odds
As we discussed above, slot machines now rely on RNGs to determine winners, unlike in the old days when the machine had actual wheels with printed symbols. When slot machines had printed wheels, you could do a little math and arrive at a rough estimate of the odds of a jackpot.
But now, since there are no physical wheels, there is no way for a player to see the odds of a jackpot when looking at the machine. The wheels have no real relationship with the game.
Near Misses
Because there are no more physical wheels, casinos are free to program slot machines to take advantage of near misses, or spins that just barely miss a jackpot. This makes the player believe they almost won, when really they were no closer than any other miss.
These near misses increase playing time. B. F. Skinner, one of the most famous psychologists of all time, noted this in 1955, way back in the days of actual reels.
On electronic machines, casinos can program electronic machines to produce near misses more often than they would appear by chance.
Multiline Play
A final innovation that came with electronic machines was multiline play. On modern electronic machines, players can bet on multiple different paylines, unlike old reel machines which typically had only one payline.
Multiline play can disguise how much a player is losing. If you bet $1 on four different lines, and then win $3 on one hit, you’ve still lost $1. But the slot machine will treat it as a winner and that, again, will encourage the player to keep going.
Find a Reliable Casino
These three techniques, along with the RTP, are ways a casino can use their slot machines to separate you from your money more efficiently. This is all the evidence you should need for how important it is to find a reputable, trustworthy place to play.
As we discussed above, online gambling games tend to have a better RTP, and the best ones avoid these sort of shady techniques.
For help finding a reliable online casino, check out some of our casino reviews, or find more tips on how to play and win in our other blog posts.