888 Live Blackjack Rigged
It’s completely natural to be anxious before joining your first online casino. After all, you’ll have to make a real-money deposit on an online platform and trust it with your funds. If you are wondering whether online casinos are rigged, we’ll provide both a short and a long answer to that question. The short one is — no, they aren’t, as long as you stick to licensed and regulated ones.
If that does not convince you, make sure to read this article and find out more about different ways online casinos can be rigged and how to stay away from such platforms.
How Can an Online Casino Be Rigged?
There are many ways to rig an online casino. Simply put, all casino games you play online use sophisticated underlying software. Developers working for reputable online casinos and content providers make sure to write code so that it cannot be tampered with.
All it takes to rig an online casino game is to alter its code so that the game is not fair anymore. Rigged online casinos usually offer games that are identical to the ones in fair and licensed casinos — the only difference is that you don’t really have an opportunity to win any money. In other words, you’ll pay and not get anything in return.
The probability of winning a prize in a rigged casino is usually much lower due to low RTP percentages.
Lowering the RTP
RTP stands for Return to Player, and it’s a figure that shows how much money is returned to players when they make bets. If the RTP is 95%, players should receive $95 for every $100 they invest in online slots. Online casinos and developers will take the remaining $5 as a profit. Naturally, some players will be luckier than others and win bigger prizes, while the less fortunate ones will leave empty-handed.
It depends if it’s live blackjack or not and what country your playing in. For instance, I live in the U.K. So I know the live games are 100% not rigged. With regards the computer models, they basically have a certain percentage payout and the mac. I get asked this all the time. It's 100% not rigged. A rigged blackjack game has the odds in it's favor. Over time, they win. Mathematics dictates this, and is undeniable. You statement is based on variance. If you flipped a coin, and it came up heads 14 times in a row, you would no doubt believe the coin to be magic.
Nevertheless, the overall distribution of prizes is such that casinos should take only a small portion of invested money while distributing the rest to players.
Rigged casinos often lower the RTP so much that it doesn’t pay off to play games. If the RTP is low, the casino will take most of the money you invest and your chances of winning a prize will be extremely low.
How do these casinos set the RTP? The answer is simple — they change the code and do not include the RNG.
RNG Doesn’t Work in Rigged Casinos
Every game of chance available in online casinos needs to have a random number generator (RNG). This is a piece of code included in casino games that ensures that they are truly random.
To explain the RNG further, we must first ask you the following question: How does luck work?
Nobody knows. It’s a complete mystery to us. The only legitimate answer is to say that luck is a product of the universe being random. Some people are luckier than others when playing casino games. You can look at the outcome of playing games of chance as one way to measure someone’s luck.
But how do you know that games are random? The answer is the RNG. Developers made a program that always comes up with entirely random results in games. Therefore, once they set the parameters and insert the RNG in the game, you can rest assured that there are no people on the other side adjusting the outcome — unless you’re playing in a rigged casino.
Games in rigged casinos aren’t random since they lack one of the essential pieces of software — the random number generator.
How Can I Make Sure That the Casino Is Trustworthy?
One of the safest ways to ensure that a casino is not rigged is to research the web and find additional information about the platform. Many professional reviews will tell you about all the disadvantages and disadvantages related to the platform you want to join.
Alternatively, you can find user opinions about specific sites and gather more info on their trustworthiness. Please note that users sometimes leave negative reviews about casinos and call them rigged simply because they weren’t lucky enough. However, if all user reviews agree that a certain casino is rigged, you should definitely think twice before you open an account.
The good thing about the online gambling industry is that rigged platforms have short lifespans. In other words, if someone proves that they are rigged, other players will find that information rather quickly. Such sites are usually then added to blacklists all over the web and players start to avoid them right away. Being busted, rigged online casinos then stop operating as they aren’t able to scam people anymore.
Yet, you should still be careful, as online scammers don’t give up easily. If their rigged platform is shut down, they often don’t hesitate to start the whole process afresh and lure newcomers into giving them their money.
Independent Auditors Ensure Fairness and Trustworthiness
If an online casino claims that it’s fair and trustworthy, why should you trust them? After all, they could lie about this and still proceed with illegal operations. That’s why independent auditing companies exist.
These are usually companies that are highly reputable as being independent and honest in their reports. They often check online casinos and other gambling platforms for fairness, after which they publish the results. To ensure that a casino is fair, auditors check their random number generators and many other things that help them determine whether a casino is fair and trustworthy.
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Companies that are currently considered leaders in the online gambling industry are eCogra, GLI, and iTechLabs. If you find certificates from these auditing firms in an online casino, you don’t have to worry.
What Does an Online Licence Provide?
If an online casino lacks a licence provided by an official regulatory body, we advise you to stay away from it. It may not be rigged, but having no licence is not a good sign. Reputable licence providers will never compromise their reputation by giving a licence to a rigged casino. Sure, some casinos become rigged over time, but as soon as regulators find that out, they revoke their licences for that platform.
Who are these regulators? In most cases, they are official commissions that decide who gets a licence. For example, in the UK, the most well-known gambling authority is the United Kingdom Gambling Commission. Casinos licensed by the UKGC need to pass a strict test that ensures no illegal operations are taking place.
There are also a couple of “global” regulators that license online gambling platforms, such as the Malta Gaming Authority, which is highly respected in the online gambling industry. Therefore, if you access a site and see that it’s licensed by the MGA, you can be sure that the casino is fair and trustworthy.
To find out whether an online casino is licensed or not, you should scroll down to the footer of the site, where information about licences is usually provided. You can then check the licence number to make sure that the information is not false.
Apart from licences, it’s also important to check who the owner of the casino is. Companies that own online casinos have either a good or bad reputation, and you definitely don’t want to play in casinos owned by companies that have a history of running blacklisted casinos.
Casinos Use Cutting-Edge Security Methods to Protect Themselves and Their Users
Even legitimate online casinos can become rigged if they fall into the wrong hands. For example, they could undergo a cyberattack and hackers could rig games in some way. Luckily, that almost never happens nowadays.
All reputable online casinos use state-of-the-art technologies that make sure nobody can tamper with the games. Moreover, these technologies protect users, their sensitive data, and their funds from all kinds of cyberattacks. For example, every casino needs to use SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption to ensure secure communication.
Conclusion — Research Before Signing Up
We live in the day and age where information travels fast, which is why it’s pretty easy to spot a rigged online casino. They don’t have any security measures, licences, RNGs, and many other things required to operate properly.
However sophisticated, rigged casinos are fairly easy to see through, and that’s why we highly advise you to explore the site before joining it. If you’re still not sure, feel free to read reviews provided by casino experts and users. They’ll provide you with vital information about the site you’re considering, including whether it’s rigged or not.
Related Articles
One of the biggest fears casino players have is being cheated by the casino.
I’ve talked to dozens of live casino players who constantly talk about how they’ve been cheated by the casino. This number is low compared to the number of online players who claim they’ve been cheated by an Internet casino.
The only question I get more than is online blackjack rigged is if online poker is rigged?
Of course it’s an entirely different subject for another day, but I feel a lot safer playing blackjack than poker when it comes to being cheated.
On this page I cover many of the common cheating claims, show you a few ways that cheating could actually occur, a few real issues online blackjack players may face, and discuss a few individual casinos.
As I explain in greater detail below, the best way to know you’re playing a fair game and not being cheated is play at an established and trusted online casino. Ones with a long track record of honest play and customer service are the place you want to play.
The two I can recommend off the top of my head are Guts Casino live blackjack and 5 Dimes real dealer blackjack. Both of these companies have been offering online gambling for years and I’ve played at both of them for real money in the past.
So, is blackjack rigged at casinos?
Claims of Cheating
The same arguments and claims are made about live dealer blackjack as video blackjack. So the following claims are in reference to both of the following questions.
Is video blackjack rigged?
Is live dealer blackjack rigged?
The most frequent claim that I read about blackjack being rigged is that a player has lost 5 straight hands, or 7 straight hands, or 10 straight hands. The person complaining states that the game must be rigged because they lost so many straight hands as if that fact alone proved something.
What these players don’t seem to understand is how probabilities and statistics work.
While you won’t lose 10 hands in a row very often, it can and will happen. Just because something is rare doesn’t mean that when it happened the casino is cheating or the game is rigged.
The odds of losing 8 hands in a row are only 1 in 173 so you’ll have long losing streaks.
On the other side you’ll occasionally have long winning streaks too. But most players quickly forget the winning streaks and scream bloody murder when the casino wins a few hands in a row.
The next complaint I see kind of falls under the same type of thing. Players say that a certain casino’s blackjack game is tighter than others and if the player gets a good hand like a pair of face cards the dealer gets the same hand or a blackjack more often than normal.
The funny thing is I’ve seen a player complain that casino A is tighter than casino B and then seen a different player complain that casino B was tighter than casino A.
The fact is these complainers are simply making statements based on guesses and what they think they see over a few hundred hands at best.
What you never see is anyone that has actually tracked the hundreds of thousands of hands needed to make a real determination of blackjack cheating.
I believe there are two reasons for this. The first reason is the general player is too lazy to actually do the work required to track that many hands. The second reason is if anyone does track the hands they find out that the games are in actuality fair so they stop complaining.
How It Could Happen
The easiest way for an online casino to rig a live dealer blackjack game is by removing some aces or face cards from the shoe.
Because most live dealer games use a 6 or 8 deck shoe and don’t go pat 50% penetration it’d be quite difficult for the average player to determine this was happening.
But a player who took the time to track enough hands would be able to see it in the statistics eventually. I’d want at least 25,000 hands to start making any accusations, and 100,000 would be better.
The only other feasible way is to use a stacked shoe, but the problem with this is in most games they have no way of knowing for sure how many seats will be filled at any time throughout the shoe. With a stacked shoe the casino needs to know how many players will be playing each round, and even then the players don’t always make the same decisions so it alters the outcomes.
Why It Doesn’t Happen
Of course I can’t guarantee that you’ll never find an online casino that cheats or a live dealer blackjack game that bends the rules, but for the most part it just doesn’t happen with the best online casinos.
If an online casino or blackjack game is caught cheating it will cost the company millions of dollars, even if they can stay in business.
The news of a casino caught cheating will spread like wildfire through the Internet community and players will never trust the casino again.
Online blackjack games don’t have to cheat in order to turn a long term profit.
Even the blackjack games that have the lowest house edge have a half percent edge over the player. And the only way a player can play at the lowest house edge is by playing perfect strategy.
Most blackjack players don’t use perfect strategy, so they give the house an additional edge.
I don’t have the exact numbers that online blackjack games operate at profit wise, but even if it’s as low as 1% overall they make money hand over fist. And the truth is that the overall house edge is probably closer to 2% than 1%.
Here’s an example to show just how profitable online blackjack is with a fair game.
If the average live dealer table has five players each betting an average of $25 per hand and the game deals 50 hands per hour the total amount wagered on the table per hour is $6,250. At 1% this is an hourly profit of $62.50 per table.
But the numbers in the example are quite conservative.
If the edge is 2% the hourly profit is $125. If the average wager is $50 with a 2% edge the profit is $250.
Remember this example just covers live dealer play. While some live dealers can deal more than 50 hands per hour, if you play on one of the software driven blackjack games you can easily play 100 hands per hour or more.
The other thing that most online blackjack players do is keep playing until they lose their entire deposit. While this is simply the average house edge grinding their bankroll down, it’s what makes blackjack even more profitable for the casino.
Most players who have a decent run and get ahead at the blackjack tables keep playing and eventually the percentages catch up with them.
In the short run the casino house edge at any blackjack table fluctuates a great deal, but as long as the casino has a big enough bankroll to ride out the short term they’re guaranteed a profit unless players figure out a way to alter the odds.
Some players can gain an edge against the casino in live play in a land based casino, but they can’t while playing live dealer blackjack online.
So is online blackjack rigged?
The bottom line is the casinos have no reason to cheat online blackjack players. In the long term it’s more profitable to deal a fair game than run the risk of being caught cheating.
I want to finish this section with a quote from a Bodog representative about blackjack.
“At the end of the day all Casino games, Blackjack included, have a house edge. We have no reason to alter the game in anyway. All you need to do is walk down the strip in Vegas and you have all the proof you need that offering a fair and honest game of Blackjack is just simply good business.”
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Individual Casinos
Over the past several months I’ve received questions about different online casinos. These questions include the following.
Is Bovada blackjack rigged or is Bodog rigged?
Is MyVegas blackjack rigged or is BetOnline blackjack rigged?
For the same reasons I’ve already covered above I don’t believe any of these casinos offer rigged blackjack games or any other games.
I don’t have as much personal experience with the second pair as with Bodog and Bovada, but I trust all of their blackjack games 100%. My personal experience with the Bodog brands is so good that I’ve played for real money with them for over 10 years and will continue to do so.
Real Problems
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As you can see you don’t have to worry about live dealer blackjack games being rigged as long as you play at established and trusted online casinos.
A few real problems blackjack players face is the ability to get money into and out of online casinos. Of course this depends a great deal on where you live, but it’s always nice to feel safe in the thought you can easily and safely take your money out of the casino when you hit a nice win.
If you can open a popular online wallet like Skrill or Neteller it’s the best way to quickly and safely move money around with online casinos. If you can’t, have a conversation with the support department before you make a deposit to find out the best way for players in your country to make a withdrawal.
August 10, 2011 - Offer valid as of date published. T&Cs apply.