Online casinos, just like everything else in this world, can cheat you out of your money. Naturally, just because something is possible it won’t necessarily happen. We realize you can’t do much with such an ambiguous answer, and what you need is a concrete one. The short answer to the question “are online casinos rigged” is no.
Unfortunately, the long answer is not so simple, because casinos need to be verified by known licensing bodies and third-party auditors. There are a lot of other technicalities as well. With that in mind, we wanted to talk more about online casinos, their safety, whether they could be rigged without us knowing, and more. So, let’s take a look at everything you need to know about this subject.
Is It Possible for an Online Casino to Be Rigged?
Everything is possible, isn’t it? But let’s get serious. Yes, technically, an online casino can be rigged. That’s because it owns and operates the platform on which you’re playing casino games, and with the proper knowledge, they can absolutely rig any game in their favour, if they want to.
The goal of every online casino is to make money. And if a casino is dishonourable enough, they can always opt to go down the road of trickery. However, this is very rare as the entire online casino market is so big and regulated, that it’s almost impossible for any regulated casino to be rigged.
Now, there is another question entirely. How can we, as casino players, know for sure that the industry itself isn’t rigged? Like we said, anyone can do anything they like with their platform. If they don’t own the games, the game developers could rig the games to work in favour of the casinos.
The problem with this kind of thinking is that we can go down a rabbit hole with no end. What’s more, many have speculated this in the past, and the answers have always been the same — online casinos are not rigged, and neither is the entire industry.
This is true because of two things called RTP and RNG.
What Are Return to Player Percentages (RTPs)?
Casinos don’t have to rig their games. They make money with a simple thing called the casino edge or house edge. This is not a hidden and unknown thing in the world of online casinos. Every quality casino and game developer will tell you that the casino games have an RTP or a Return to Player percentage that’s never 100%, but always somewhere slightly below it. In essence, this means that the casino will always pay slightly less to their players than what they wager.
However, this doesn’t mean that every player always wins less than they wager. The RTP is a general number that’s true for the casino itself only. The players themselves can earn 95% of what they wagered or 9500%.
Why? Because online casino games also use something called Random Number Generators or RNGs.
What Are Random Number Generators (RNGs)?
Random number generators, or RNGs for short, are algorithms that ensure that the outcomes in casino games are always randomly generated.
How this works is simple — each casino game playing session runs code in the background, and this code ensures that whenever you spin the reel in a slot, for example, what comes out is entirely random. This way, no one ever knows what the result will be for an individual player.
The only thing that the casino knows is that they will always make a profit because of RTPs, but they never know what exactly each of their players will win at any given point.
Are RNGs and RTPs Fair?
Some might consider the way all of this works to be fraudulent, but casinos have to ensure their profitability. If they can’t guarantee that, then the entire industry becomes unpredictable and thus prone to falling apart.
By introducing a house edge and RNG, online casinos have ensured they remain profitable while also letting players win big from time to time. This way, all you need is luck! And skills, if you’re playing games like blackjack, for instance. But that’s a whole different story.
The point of all of this is that as long as there are RTPs and RNGs, the possibility for a casino being rigged becomes zero. But what about the real-life examples where casinos were rigged and were proven to have committed fraud? Well, what we can tell you for certain is that in all of these cases, the games themselves were tampered with to ensure a higher house edge than the industry standard.
If it’s entirely possible for fraudulent and low-quality casinos to do this, how can we know that any casino we find isn’t rigged?
It might seem as if we are back where we started, but the reality is, thankfully, very different. That’s all due to licenses and auditors.
Only High-Quality and Trustworthy Casinos Get Licenses
The most important thing every player needs to check before joining an online casino is the license it holds. Or even better, licenses. That’s because government agencies provide these licenses, and they ensure the casino is checked and that it respects and complies with all gaming and gambling laws.
In the world of online casinos, there are two government agencies whose licenses are highly-prized by online casinos:
Most online casinos try to get at least one of these licenses as they are proof to players that the services they offer are fair and verified.
Naturally, there are other licensing bodies as well, but these two are the most common ones you’ll find.
So, whenever you’re looking to join an online casino, visit its home page and scroll down to the footer, as that’s the most common location a casino shows its licenses. Every casino lists numbers of their license, so you can easily verify with the licensing body that the information the casino has displayed is legitimate.
The Owner of the Casino
Before we explain the importance of third-party auditors, it’s important to mention that the trustworthiness of a casino can sometimes be ascertained by looking at its owner.
Many owners operate multiple online casinos, and by checking which casinos they operate and what their reputation is, you can gain a clearer picture of how trustworthy the owner and thus the casino you’ve chosen is.
This could be useful as there are always a few odd owners who have a bunch of blacklisted online casinos, and they should always be avoided.
Auditors Ensure Online Casinos Are Always Fair to Their Players
Auditors are third-party companies with strong reputations that exist to ensure that casinos are fair, trustworthy and that what they say they are is entirely accurate.
More importantly, auditors ensure that online casinos don’t fall back on what they have done in the past. They do this by occasionally checking online casinos they have reviewed in the past, to make sure that everything is still the same.
Auditors monitor many things, but it’s important to mention that they always verify that RNGs haven’t been tampered with, as this is a vital thing to check.
If you want to establish whether a third-party auditor has verified a casino, you should look for the certificates the casino holds. Many auditors exist, but the most important ones you need to know about are iTechLabs, eCogra, BMM Compliance, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, TST, and GLI. If an online casino has certificates from one or more of these auditors, you can be sure that its system is regularly checked to ensure continued fairness and truthfulness.
The Importance of Security
In the end, it’s crucial to mention that even the best casinos that hold all the right licenses and everything else they need to be considered entirely fair and legitimate, can become rigged if hackers and cybercriminals compromise them.
For these reasons, every reputable online casino uses state-of-the-art tech and security features that ensure this never happens. The good thing is that it rarely does. Even though hackers regularly compromise many other industries, online casinos are usually safe.
All quality casinos make sure they use features like Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption to ensure communication and transactions between their platform and the players are entirely secure. They use other features as well, but the most important one is SSL, so if you’re interested, always check that the casino you want to play in uses SSL encryption.
Conclusion — What You Need to Do Before You Start Playing
All in all, any online casino can be rigged, but this rarely happens. Due to RNGs, RTPs, licenses, auditors, and more, it’s easy to find which casinos are trustworthy and which aren’t.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter how likely it is for a casino to be rigged; the key is to do research and understand how this entire market works.
Now all you need to do is take a closer look and see if your preferred casino follows what we’ve established here. Once you do, you’ll know that it’s entirely fair and trustworthy, so there’s no more need to worry about it being rigged!
And if you don’t fully trust your judgment and the limited knowledge you have, you can always check online reviews. The good thing here is that rigged casinos are easily spotted nowadays, so a glance at a few reviews should be enough to ensure whether any given casino is safe to join or not.
