May 11
14
Are Online Roulette Companies Completely Fair?
It does sound easy but actually producing a random number for a computer is quite difficult. It’s important to remember this as many computer programs need to be just that. For example fruit machines or online roulette all need random numbers to make them fair. It should be of concern to anyone who everybody who wants to play roulette online especially if they do it regularly.
Unfortunately it really is tough for a computer to be random, simply because they have to be told how to do it. The computer runs code, the code is written by the programmer which determines how to act. It’s very difficult to write lines of instructions that produce a truly random result. In reality all they can produce is Pseudo-random numbers which to be fair are very difficult to predict. It’s actually difficult to spot the problem though – go and have a look at the spins produced at a free online roulette and see if you can see a pattern, I’ll bet you can’t.
Another difficulty is that most people have a very inaccurate idea of what exactly is random. We tend to want 50/50 chances to happen 50% of the time which is actually not going to happen that often surprisingly enough. Real random sequences can actually look very strange, with long, improbable sequences commonplace. Anyone who has watched a random roulette wheel turn out 8 reds in a row might think that isn’t random but it actually happens more often than you would guess. Again our flawed perceptions of what ‘random’ should look like usually ends up in the code of the computer program.
In online gambling though, the problem goes even deeper – the perception of a player is equally as important. If we get an unlucky spin of a wheel or reel on an online game we get suspicious of the computer. If it happened on a real roulette wheel in a casino we’d probably mark it down to being unlucky. It’s especially dangerous if you’re running any sort of roulette systems which relies on a completely random gain.
For me this perception that everything is a series of code spoils the fun too much. I can’t enjoy computerised gambling as it doesn’t feel like lady luck is given a free reign. It probably explains the huge surge in the advent of live streaming casino games instead of computer systems too.
