Much has been written about the veracity of land-based slot machines. A great article from Steve Bourie entitled, “Are Slot Machines Honest?” and originally appeared in the 1999 American Casino Guide. (Can be found online by searching for the title on Google or Yahoo!.) Physical, land-based slot machines have more “variety” (be polite) than can fool players. Of course, all of that was illegal and didn’t happen. But read the article carefully.
On the other hand, online casino slots use an electronic “random number generator” or RNG, which operates inside a very large computer program that manages the graphics of the game, the player accounts of those who join the game, the statistics of each hand played. , and more. A random number generator is an immutable hard-coded software instruction. There is no “reason switch” (see Bourie article) that can be reversed to give players worse odds. Regarding control parameters, each use of the RNG is the same as the last use, and will be the same as the next use. The numbers will come out randomly, but the randomness pattern never changes. This is a real advantage of software based online casino slots.
Land-based slot machines can also have payout percentages as low as 83%, which is not the case for online casino slots. In online games, each machine has the same winning percentage as the other machines. You can look at the payout percentages for many online gaming sites, and you’ll notice that it rarely drops below 95% – that is, the house makes an average profit of 5%. In fact, most casinos can document that their payout percentages are in the 97% – 98% range. This means you can spend an hour, stake your $100 bet about 3 times, and the average cost is $7.50. But players don’t bet on being ordinary: the real prize is a high-paying win. And high-paying wins are offset, of course,
So, are online casino slots fair? Yes, absolutely. The software that operates the games is regularly tested by independent testing labs (look for the logo at the bottom of the casino website), and none of the games can be individually controlled for bias. That is a far cry from the situation with land-based slot machines, which are aptly 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 part of the thrill.
So next time you want to play slot machines, even if there is a land based casino next door, you are better advised to go to your computer and play online casino slots. They are a much better bet.