Roulette is as popular now as it was back in the 17th century when it was first invented. The iconic casino game comes in three varieties; European roulette, American roulette, and French roulette and each one of these delivers a plethora of ways to win; the biggest being via the straight-up bet. But are these games as random as they claim?
From live casino roulette to automatic games, every one of these online casino games offers impressive camera angles for players to view each result as it happens. However, there are some instances when the camera angles can’t quite keep up and this is when the fairness of the game comes into question.
In short, online gambling (and Online Roulette) is not rigged. It’s overseen by authorities like The UK Gambling Commission, Kahnawake Gambling Commission, Malta Gaming Authority and others with the goal of keeping gambling fair and reliable. Rumors of games being rigged mostly stem from the late 1990s which were the Wild West days of online. The answer to your question are roulette wheels rigged or fixed is a resounding NO at least not in england,roulette wheels are checked every week in england for their balance and accuracy,to play with a plastic one and to say you have a system worked out from that, is as inaccurate as saying you can navigate a ship with a needle balanced on a. In the casino online world, the people who claim the industry is rigged will point to instances where a set of results looked odd. For example, if a player is taking a shot at roulette and they see the number 8 roll in six times in a row, they will identify this as a pattern that proves the casino has rigged the game.
RNG Approved
Contrary to some claims, all outcomes are random. There are no magnets on the wheel, neither are there ways to manipulate the outcome. Unlike blackjack where the outcome of your decisions will affect the outcome of the game, roulette is subject to what’s known as the law of independent trials. All outcomes are independent of one another and this means that the previous results will have no impact on future games.
All good casinos (both online and via apps) offer a history of the game, where the outcomes of the last 10 to 100 games will be shown. Hot and cold numbers will be displayed; hot being the numbers that are winning the most often and cold being those that are not winning at all, but these alone will not give a definitive result on the next game. Despite this information being on display, the only way to win is to correctly predict where the ball will come to a stop, and that ball will only land where it wants to.
The European roulette wheel houses 37 different segments: numbers 1 to 36 and a single zero. You can learn all about it here. The chances of winning are 36:1 in every game; that’s 36 ways to lose and only 1 way to win. In online games, fairness is always guaranteed via a Random Number Generator (RNG), which is a piece of software that cannot be manipulated in any way and, in many circumstances, the RNG software is rigorously tested by independent bodies to ensure 100% fairness. Unlike other casino games online, roulette only requires a single number per spin to be produced, making the work of that RNG far less complicated.
Can Online Roulette Be Rigged?
Claims of games being rigged are not a new concept and will always be around, but this will never be true at a reliable casino. Online casinos are only granted gambling licenses for meeting extremely strict criteria. You can’t have an operator running dodgy games and then governing bodies such as the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) accepting this by giving them carte blanche to carry on misleading players. There are tough rules and regulations to adhere to, even after the license has been granted.
Random checks and investigations are carried out all the time and in one instance, an online casino had its license revoked for misleading players with ‘free play bonuses’. Governing bodies are not afraid to slap hefty fines on operators either. In 2018, seven major online operators had to cough up the equivalent of £14m in fines for a string of issues – mainly money laundering and how they handled problem gamblers.
What about unique roulette games? Evolution Gaming, the award-winning software company have its own versions of the popular roulette wheel and one of those is Lightning Roulette. Players are required to place bets as they normally would, however, straight up bets can deliver multipliers of up to 500x in every game round. Just like other companies with bespoke variants of roulette, it’s their job to ensure the games testing, auditing, and verification of the RNG are performed by relevant and impartial testing agencies.
The Final Conclusion
So, is the game of roulette rigged? No, and it will never be. Licensed operators are audited by trusted third-party organizations like eCOGRA. Plus, third-party testing agencies are brought in to randomly test and verify roulette games from time to time which includes extensive tests to ensure pay-out percentages are correct. If auditors find that the RNG software is fair, they usually provide a certificate to the casino for them to display at the foot of their website.
Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
Editors’ Recommendations:
We probably all know that feeling, the suspicion that our computerized opponent is not actually playing fair. That time when you’re even money bet has the probability of a long shot. The strange feeling that it’s much easier to way in the fun mode of online roulette rather than when you play with real money.
We do rely on them completely to be impartial but it’s sometimes hard to accept a result which doesn’t go our way. Of course, any online game which is computer controlled is reliant on a random number generator of some sort to simulate ‘fair play’ on the electronic roulette wheels. There are definitely sometimes flaws in these generators that run the roulette wheel, but unless they were deliberately skewed towards the house these very slight variances shouldn’t be an issue. It’s pretty safe to say the vast majority of online casino’s do offer a fair game and not one that is deliberately rigged.
If you do come across reports of rigged casinos then it’s obviously worth investigating however never underestimate the power of ‘gambler’s remorse’. This is quite simply, the feeling a gambler has who has lost and wants someone to blame. It’s easy to draw the conclusion that a casino is cheating especially if you’ve encountered some statistically unlikely events.
Casinos Make More Real Money in the Long Run Playing Fair
There’s a few simple reasons that the majority of online casinos do offer a fair game. Firstly many of them use licensed casino games for their sites from the likes of Microgaming, these are hugely successful companies who’s reputation would be destroyed if their games were proven to be unfair. Secondly, for the vast majority of casinos all you need to do to make money is to attract enough players – all games are all biased towards the house anyway. Sure, they’re be a few lucky winners, but these are to be expected and indeed act as a powerful advertisement for any gaming platform anyway. Their profit margin is almost guaranteed by the house edge so there’s little real incentive in the long run to start messing around with random number generators for example.
An important point worth mentioning is that in the vast majority (if not all) cases, the casinos themselves do not control any aspect of the Random Number Generator at the heart of all these games. They are run and licensed by third party companies. They are also mostly tested by yet another third part organization like eCOGRA who are brought in and completely independent.
Of course, this doesn’t alter the fact that it’s perfectly possible to rig online roulette or any computerized game. However the fact is that it’s usually just not worth it especially for the major players in the market. Which is one reason why it’s always best to play any online game through one of the larger companies who treat their player fairly. It’s not always easy to find them online though, particularly because casino licensing and registration of any online casino is often confusing and complicated.
Online Licensing for Betting
Every online casino should be licensed somewhere and that should be displayed on their website. Of course the value of these licenses vary depending on where it’s issued from, some are virtually worthless.
Places which are legitimate and do proper checks on the gaming licenses they issue are Malta and the United Kingdom. The British licenses are issued through the Gambling Commission and you can check through their register to see if a company is genuinely licensed. If it is then you’re almost certainly safe, and if there are any problems you can route your issues directly through them.
This image below will look at your location when you click it and send you to a large, respected online casino accessible in your region.
There’s no doubt though that it can definitely feel like you’re being cheated sometimes when you play online. One of the surefire ways to experience this is to play around with one of the progression systems like Martingale. This system and many of it’s hybrids relies on the fact that you shouldn’t get long streaks of the same number or zone. Yet even the most casual Martingale player will have come across some ridiculous streaks of all blacks or reds/odds/evens etc. When you see an event with a huge probability against it occurring it’s tempting to think that the AI in the casino game is conspiring against you.
There’s almost no way to say for certain, however it’s probably safe to say that widespread rigging doesn’t take place. In fact most complaints for example on popular casino blacklist pages like the one maintained by the Wizard of Odds don’t actually complain about the games themselves. Where the problems usually lie is with customer service particularly regarding payouts, terms and various restrictions hidden in the small print on their sites. There’s no worse feeling for a gambler to be denied a big win via a customer service desk designed to cheat the player. You can play the fairest game on the internet, but if the casino won’t pay out then it’s as bad as the casino being rigged anyway.
It’s a much simpler way to cheat, rather than messing around with legitimate random number generators that all casinos use then simply reference vague conditions or issue new ones to justify not paying out. What’s more there’s little evidence with this method as opposed to doctoring a roulette wheel or messing around with the roulette games.
The worst casinos will just simply refuse to payout a large win or make up some spurious excuse not to do so. Even if they do payout some casino will drag the payout process for ridiculous amounts of time. It’s often surprising how quickly these casino’s can process deposits but struggle to operate in the opposite direction! These casinos will commonly offer unusually large sign up bonuses but protected through equally large play through requirements too. It’s easy to avoid these scenarios though, stick with the big companies – it’s not worth risking smaller online casinos at all.
The point we’re making here is that not that it’s impossible to fix or rig a casino game, because it’s clearly not. However there’s much more risk to this method than simply having a customer service team instructed to avoid paying out whenever possible. Unfortunately it’s extremely difficult to make such a casino pay out even when they’re clearly cheating their players. Online casinos suffer from a lack of regulation and protection for the players which is apparent globally.
If you choose one of the bigger companies, you may miss out on ridiculous bonuses but you should get a fair game with an honest level of customer service. To be fair the major players know that long term these are the factors that almost guarantee success. Every single casino game from roulette to Blackjack has a built in house advantage which gives the casino a positive expectation overall. These companies promote their winners and advertise their successes as it brings more player and more profit.
Forget the Computers and Look for Live Dealers
If you can’t get over your trust issue with computerized games, and really I get it, I do. Or perhaps you want to use a specific roulette strategy that won’t really work against a computer program. Then you have only two options if you enjoy playing casino games and want to continue. First the obvious one is to stop playing online and go find your nearest land based physical casino. They are normally pretty friendly places when you get inside and even the famous ones are usually very encouraging for even the newest players. Obviously this doesn’t suit anyone and especially in the US you can even find yourselves surrounded with casinos or hundreds of miles from one!
The second solution is to carry on playing online but avoid the computer generated games and slots and look for live games run by a live dealer. These are actual games controlled by a real croupier of dealer somewhere, sometimes in real casino or in a studio supporting online players. There’s many more which are run from a studio, for example. These used to be very hard to find, however now most of the larger companies have live games with real dealers. In fact some of the best online roulette games available now are run in this live environment.
Online Roulette Live
It’s of course possible to rig a live game too in the same way that a real casino could rig a roulette wheel or a table game. What does igt mean in texting. However the idea of the dealer having a brake ready to stop the roulette wheel are extremely unlikely. Also the suspicion that your dealer is somehow controlling the roulette table by spinning the wheel at different speeds or using magnetic balls to make sure you lose is probably unfounded.
Online Roulette Free
Remember the casino doesn’t need to cheat, in reality they have all the guarantee they need – the house edge which exists in all roulette games. You see it’s physical manifestation as the number zero on the roulette wheels in any casino games. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing online roulette through a random number generator or a live dealer the advantage exists in the rules of the game. Their advantage grows depending on which game, which roulette wheels are used – stay away from American roulette which has the worst odds for the player.
Are Online Casinos Rigged
Big Companies Value Their Reputation for Online Roulette
To most of the big brands our individual wins and losses are not of a great concern. The volume of players behind these online roulette games is where the profit lies. Indeed even the share value of these companies is vastly more important than tricking a player out of a win or two. If you stay with the brands you might still lose on you favorite casino games but you won’t lose unfairly. Remember sometimes the laws of probability come up with some unbelievable events. Many times have I seen the experienced Martingale player shaking their heads over some long, incredible streak and random number which has blasted their system (and stake money) away on online roulette.
It can feel that any game is rigged when luck is not going your way, and disgruntled punters are way more to complain online than celebrate their lucky streaks. It’s a game and as long as you make sure the company has a decent reputation and brand you’ll get a fair game.
If you’re in Europe – here’s one of the biggest companies in the online roulette games world. Some great games, helpful service and one of the widest range of roulette games that you can find anywhere.
Can you imagine how much their domain name is worth !