Are Online Casinos Rigged? – A Deep Dive Into Online Casino Legitimacy
Feeling anxious about using an online casino for the first time is totally normal—after all, you’re putting your own cash on the line at websites you’ve never used before. Plus, it’s hard to shake off those nagging doubts—are these online casinos fair, and can you trust them? Do they use underhanded tactics to make sure you don’t win? It’s a lot to think about! But don’t worry; we are going to get to the bottom of your worries and answer the question once and for all—are online casinos rigged?
The short answer is no, as long as the online casino is part of a reputable network that complies with all applicable laws and regulations! We will go over the facts about online casinos and dispel some of the fiction you may have heard about virtual casinos so you know exactly what you’re dealing with when you gamble online.
Online Casino Legitimacy: The Facts
Hear us out before you automatically assume that online casinos are rigged—as with any other legit business, the primary goal of a casino, whether online or a brick-and-mortar building, is to make money, and gaming establishments have devised a sophisticated and reliable system to meet this goal.
Yes, the famous saying is “the house always wins.” Regardless of how much money players win or lose, the casino always comes out ahead of all winning players because of the calculated edge or advantage. If you think you can beat the casino, you might want to reconsider your career as a “professional” gambler.
The fiction that online casinos are rigged has been perpetuated due to the fact that all players, and we mean every single one, who try their hands at casino games never walk away as winners. But this is simply untrue and can be easily debunked—this is a complete fiction.
We’ll walk you through all the steps involved in verifying an online casino’s compliance with local laws and regulations so you can feel safe playing virtually—even if you don’t win big (although we hope you do)!
How to Pick Reputable Online Casinos
We cannot stress this point enough but always do your research before investing any money in an online casino. Make sure its gaming license is valid; it has credibility, security measures, an up-to-date and reliable software provider, etc. In order to recommend any online casino to you, we put them through a rigorous testing process that includes playing their games in real money mode. Yes, we spend our own money when writing our online casino reviews to make sure it’s a legit site!
Check out the following list of what you should be looking for when choosing an online casino:
Licensing of Online Games
Listen up, online gamblers! If an online casino has a gaming license or other type of government-issued accreditation, this is the most important verification that it is operating legally and is not rigged. Online casinos, like their brick-and-mortar counterparts, prominently display their licenses on the home page, often in the footer of the site.
It doesn’t matter if the casino has a gaming regulator logo or a license number—you can view the legal document on the regulator’s website. Once you find that the site is licensed, you can breathe a sigh of relief and register to play.
A gaming license ensures that the casino follows the rules and also allows you to take legal action if something smells foul or you suspect shady practices.
Online Casino Credibility
The credibility of any reputable online casino is crucial— to succeed in the competitive online gaming industry, it is imperative to establish and maintain a solid reputation. Independent casino review sites play a vital role in informing potential players about how online casinos work.
We want to help players identify which online casinos are legitimate and which are out to fleece them of their hard-earned money. Even if we were to assure you that the online casinos we recommend are fair and honest, the opinions of real players carry so much more weight!
The best way to get a feel for an online casino is to read customer reviews from real players.
Online Casino Software Providers
In order for software developers to sell their games to customers, they need the same kind of reputable licenses that are required of online casinos. A provider’s license is not the same as a casino operator’s license, although both are necessary to guarantee the fairness of the game.
Users have reported that rogue software vendors are more common than the possibility of an online casino being rigged. You can find information about these vendors on the web; this is a great place to start if you want to be sure the game developer is on the up and up.
The most reputable software companies are Pragmatic Play, NetEnt, BGaming, and Scientific Games—all are well-known and respected in the online gaming biz, so you can feel secure when these providers are the ones behind the games for online casinos.
Check the Terms and Conditions
A website’s terms and conditions may also indicate whether it is a rigged online casino. We are aware that very few people read all of the terms and conditions (seriously, they are like 20 pages long), even though we all should! But you won’t need to read every word of the terms of use to see the red flags of a rigged virtual location; they will stick out like a sore thumb.
There are red flags that you are dealing with a shady online casino when the terms and conditions include charging you fees for periods of inactivity (often known as “non-play fees”), terminating your account for no apparent reason, or simply tweaking the T&Cs without notifying customers.
If the casino’s terms and conditions don’t include anything about responsible gaming, it’s probably best to back out of that browser tab and spend your money elsewhere. Virtually every licensing agency mandates that licensees provide responsible gaming tools or provide ways to combat gambling addiction, so the absence of these safeguards is a clear sign of possible dubious business practices.
Safety First
If you’re considering a real money online casino, you need to be sure you can trust the site, so it’s super important to choose an online casino with a proven rep for safety.
For example, to guarantee that the results of their games are truly random and fair, software developers and casinos must use RNG as a standard operating procedure. And when an online casino receives a third-party seal of approval, they display it on their website front and center.
But like we said, it is in your best interest to read the security policies of an online casino closely before giving them your payment info.
An online casino’s records can provide an overview of its strategy for dealing with safety and security issues, so checking reviews for complaints is another way to find out how it handles security and possible breaches.
Why Legit Online Casinos Don’t Need to Rig Games
Fact check: online casino games are not “rigged” in the sense that they are designed to cheat players—they want to make more money for the casino rather than for the actual customers. It is not exactly a well-kept secret, and no casino tries to hide this.
There is a built-in mathematical advantage in every game provided by the casino, whether that advantage is in coding or construction. You may be more familiar with this pattern by its other name, “house edge” (the return to the player is the inverse of the house edge).
Let’s say, for example, a game of blackjack—the house edge remains at 0.5% even if you follow the most reliable plan and play every card correctly. Despite the fact that this may seem like a small part, the casino will still make a profit of 0.5 cents per $100 wagered. Those few cents add up to a lot of money over time!
The mammoth number of players using online casinos at any given moment basically eliminates the need to manipulate the games; since casinos exist to make money from players, they have no reason to resort to dishonest means to achieve this.
Can you Trust Online Casino Games?
There is no such thing as a “rigged” game in a legitimate casino—they are pre-programmed to benefit the casino, so they don’t need to be “rigged” in the conventional sense.
All online casino games provide an edge; whether it’s poker, craps, or blackjack, the house always wins.
How Can I tell if an Online Casino is Rigged?
Some online casinos cheat their customers by manipulating the software that runs the games, especially Return to Player (RTP) and Random Number Generator (RNG).
Basically, online gambling games are designed to have unpredictable results. However, rigged gambling enterprises will alter the game’s programming code so that you can never win.
The two most typical scams in online casinos are RTP and RNG manipulation.
A game’s return to player (RTP) indicates the amount of money you could expect to make from it over time. For example, if the game’s RTP is 96%, you can expect to win $96 for every $100 you wager.
This number is an average amount, and players’ actual returns will naturally vary depending on their individual luck. This is to be expected; after all, slots are games of chance, so the most important thing is to make sure you are not cheated out of your money.
Online casinos that are rigged may change the RTP of the games to make it less likely that the player will win—low player return percentages are a hallmark of rigged gaming sites.
Manipulation of random number generators (RNG) is another scam in shady online casinos. All casino games must use a random number generator to provide truly unpredictable results. However, fraudulent casinos can change the random number generator (RNG), eliminating any chance of random success.
Takeaways
We are well aware of the existence of shady online casinos and will do everything in our power to steer you away from these places. If you only play at online casinos that are verified and legitimate, you can relax and have fun armed with these facts vs. fiction about rigged online casinos!
