this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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I understand why people do emotionally, but working in tech I just know there's no such thing as "online gambling". Even random number generators can't be 100% random. This takes that and adds on businesses that want to be profitable and minimal oversite.
I don't know how people can believe it's fair and not rigged. You're telling me out of all of those millions of lines of code, nothing in there skews a bit to the house to screw you over? Nah, they'll keep your money. Any wins you may have are because they let you have them.
It's all rigged, technically. If you go to a real life casino, slots are certified to pay out some percentage of plays. It's like, 8%.
If you play craps, roulette - the house always has the edge because there's more results favorable to them.
The only "casino" game where the house doesn't have an edge is poker because that's player against player. The house doesn't really have a stake in any outcome, they're just being paid to host the game.
Besides your examples there are only a handful of games where the player has so much as an even chance against the casino and even then it requires doing extra skill based efforts. One example is card counting in blackjack, using basic strategy you can lower the house edge to something like 1% or even a little lower depending on the rules of the table. Counting is the only way to push the edge in the players favor in blackjack. Even then, its taking what is around a 48% chance for favorable player outcomes and barely nudging it to a 50-51% chance for the player. Roulette has some of the best odds, something like a 7-8% chance to land on any one number and with hedge bets those odds go up without any input from either side but even then the house edge in that is still ludicrously high by comparison to blackjack, baccarat or poker.
Physical slots "feel" less likely to be rigged than digital slots but as another commenter said it depends on the jurisdiction one finds themselves in as to whether that is true or not. The state would like their cut too so most regulators want to keep the games fair as fair games draw players in. Rigged games eventually lose casinos business cause word spreads among the players. Overall digital slots just feel less trustworthy and most likely are less trustworthy.
In Poker, the Casino keeps a rake out of every pot.
There's also blackjack, but you have to start with a large sum, and count cards. Technically there's nothing wrong with that, but you'll get kicked out.
Edit: woops. Yeah the other guy already made my point.
No! Only we can rig games in our favor! Get out! -casinos
Why are you stalking me?
Oh agreed, it's just to me there isn't even the illusion of chance now. That "deck of cards" could have all the face cards "missing" out of it and no one would know. The slots could literally be programmed to pay out only if you seem like you're getting bored. it's just too easy
It depends on your definition of rigged. There are many "provably fair" online casinos where they use hashes and user generated seeds that influence the outcome such that it makes it 100% verifiably fair but you will still lose over time because the house edge. If you call the house edge "rigged" then offline gambling is equally rigged
Offline casinos can also make money on drinks/snacks/entrance fee/hotels rooms. Theoretically it would be possible to run an offline casinos with loosing odds. (They don't)
That's impossible for online casinos.
Offline casinos have a much higher margin (called house edge) than online casinos. This is because they need to pay rent, business rates, salaries, security, etc. Online casinos can survive on a skeleton crew with a cloud based turn key solution. Thus their house edge is usually lower. The lower the house edge is, the more players win. The more players win, the more players you have.
The casinos I've been to have had free drinks, snacks, and entry
I wouldn't call pseudorandomess(if that's what you're implying) as disqualifying something from being gambling - it only needs to be random enough with an even distribution.
If instead you're talking about odds being slightly in favor of the house then... that's literally no different than gambling irl either. At which point, I have to question what you even define as "gambling".
Online casinos are not rigged. But there's a lot of math behind them. And this math tells you exactly how much money the casino will make. There's literally no point rigging anything when you have a super stable source of income.