Saturday, January 30, 2010

Casino RNG

I was speaking to my mate the other day who played alot of roulette when he was in Vegas and he bought up an interesting point about random number generators in online casino's. He said that when he was in Vegas he did this betting pattern or doubling his bets on the loss and betting on the 50/50's so he was basically betting the casino they couldn't win 7 fifty fifty bets in a row. Now he tried to do the same online and he lost a load. He then spoke to me about a fruit machine in a pub. They are gambling tools and are in now way random. They pay out a percentage of the money that gets taken in so they always win. My friend thinks the Roulette tables online are set up in a similar way, the casino's say that all their games are generated by some hi-tec randon number generator but you can't tell me the slots on the sites are random?

I did some reading up online on these RNG's and tried to look at the regulating bodies to see what they think. Thats where it gets a bit strange, the regulating bodies themselves do not actually check the random number generaters, they just need the random number generator to be checked by an "approved lab". The casino i checked had had theirs checked by a company called TST "Technical systems testing) and by pricewaterhousecoopers who are an accounting firm. They said that the RNG was "Statistically random". That just bought up more questions to me. How can something be statistically random?? Mainly they said that there were no patterns. Now if the lottery, that we know IS random, pulled the same numbers two weeks running then we would think it strange but as we know it's random it'll just be coincidence. IF a RNG did the same would they pull it and say that it's not random?? Surely part of a RANDOM number generator would be that sometimes the same numbers in the same sequence will occur?

At no time do i think that the casino's games are predictable, fixed, beatable by cheating AT ALL. I just argue the fact that they are as random as a roulette wheel.....

3 comments:

Meteoric said...

Why would they need to rig the RNG? Roulette makes money because it's not a zero sum game - there's no need to rig it as it already makes money just by the probabilities not adding up. Add to that the mass market of being online (compared to limit number of seats in B&M), and you're onto an easy money maker.

Slots are setup the same way - the payout is less than the odds of hitting that particular win. No need to rig it - it's essentially an unfair game from the outset.

I suppose there's the argument (used by a lot of poker is rigged fans) that by rigging it in a certain way it sucks people in and keeps them playing. Rigging it to make them lose in the short-term wouldn't be the way to do that either - let them win big once early on and then let them donk the money back into the system. I still can't see the point - poker sites are making huge profits from rake - even the smallest loss of trust will dent these profits. It's not in their interest to rig things when it makes loads when done fairly...

United113 said...

I'm not saying it is rigged at all, there is of no benefit for it to be rigged. What i'm saying is is it Random?? How can you test something to be random? surely if something is random it could have any possible outcome and not be "statistically different"?

Meteoric said...

oh, I see :-)

I guess it's all statistics - gaussian distrbutions and all that. Stuff that was too dull at school to listen to...