The slot machines featured on reputable online casino sites are not rigged. Slots' random number generators (RNG) ensure there is no 'machine memory' of previous spins as they are programmed to function on individual spins. You might be aiming to win some money; the main goal of the online casinos is to make a profit from customers who love gambling. There are laws and regulations which will help you to know are online casino slots rigged or not. In fact, it will also help you to know are online casinos fair. Gamblers often suspect that are casino games rigged.

Many of us have been excited about playing slots at some point, only to find the excitement quickly turning into disappointment. Nothing seems to work. Only small wins and not even a single bonus game. You feel cheated.

Was the slot machine rigged?

In all honesty, it could have been. If you played at one of the reputable real-money online casinos, however, it probably wasn't. You just happened to be on the bad side of variance (in the long run, you should lose a lot of money at slot machines anyway).

And we'll never truly know. Since you're supposed to lose at slot machines and online casinos have no obligations to share their payback percentages, they could run their machines at ridiculously low returns and we wouldn't have the slightest clue about it.

Many people will tell you that rigged online slots are rare because online casinos have no reason to cheat; they make so much money from slot machines already simply by offering fair games.

That's far from a convicing argument - as if there were no greedy people in the world. But there's some logic behind the argument as well. Since the casino already has an edge over the player, the only thing they need is to get more players. Cheating slot machine players out of their money is hardly a good way to get new sign-ups.

We are not going to lie – there are casinos with rigged online slot games. These are rogue casinos that aim to scam you out of your money as opposed to providing you with a legitimate online gambling experience. However, there are several ways in which a player is able to sport such casinos. Many people will tell you that rigged online slots are rare because online casinos have no reason to cheat; they make so much money from slot machines already simply by offering fair games. That's far from a convicing argument - as if there were no greedy people in the world. But there's some logic behind the argument as well.

Are Online Slots Rigged

In a sense it's hard to define 'rigged online slots' since technically an online casino doesn't cheat if it has ridiculously low payout percentages set to its slot machines.

But we should treat them the same as if they were cheating.

How to Find Safe Online Casinos

The solution I've come-up with is to play at reputable sites that have reputable private auditors testing their RNGs and payout percentages. Even better if the private auditor has been allowed to publish how much the online casino has paid out monthly.

Still, one could argue that you never know if online casinos bribe private auditors to creating good reports. True. We'll never know for sure.

But if you believe that there are online casinos without rigged slots, why not trust the ones that are willing to let auditors publish their results for everyone to see? The ones that seemingly have nothing to be ashamed of?

If I were to run an honest online casino with no rigged slot machines, why wouldn't I publish payout reports? Why would I let anyone think that I could have rigged online slots at my casino?

By the way, one of the ways to keep an eye on dishonest, cheating online casinos is to look at internet blacklists, such as the one at Casinomeister.com.

Do you love online gambling games but aren’t sure if the slot machines you adore are rigged? We’re here to dive into the truth about slot machines.

According to a 2010 American Gaming Association report, slot machines generate nearly 70 percent of a casino’s revenue. That is up from 45 percent in 1970.

Casinos love slot machines because they are consistent, popular money makers. But, at least at first glance, players should be suspicious of them for the same reason. Slot machines seem so good for casinos, it makes you wonder: are slot machines rigged?

The answer is no, and yes. Really, it depends on what you mean by rigged.

Defining Rigged

In order to decide whether slot machines are rigged, we first need to talk about what rigged might mean in this context.

The first version of rigged you probably think of is a game it is impossible to win. That’s the way shady carnival games might be rigged, or the scam version of Three-card Monte where there isn’t actually a Queen.

The good news is slot machines, including online gambling slot games, are not rigged like that. It is absolutely possible for you to win playing. People win all the time, and it would be illegal if you couldn’t.

Now for the bad news: there is a different sense in which slot machines are rigged. Basically, the casino, or house, gets to decide how often people can win.

The House Advantage in Slot Machines

Casinos (including online casinos) are built to make money and they could not stay in business if people won more money than they lost. So, slot machines are programmed to take in more money than they pay out in the long run.

That doesn’t mean that an individual person cannot win money playing slot machines. Some do.

What it does mean is that if enough people play, the casino will take in more from the losers than it gives to the winners. Likewise, if any individual person plays long enough, they will lose money to the casino.

That is how slot machines are rigged: the house always has a built-in advantage. All casino games have varying house advantages, not just slots.

In slots, this advantage is represented by the return-to-player, or RTP. The RTP represents the percentage of your bet that you can expect to win back. So, if the RTP is 95%, then for every $100 you bet, you can expect to win $95 back. The casino makes its profit on the other $5.

Of course, things won’t follow the RTP perfectly in the short term. You could win more or less than the expected $95, and there are things you can do to help you win at slots. But in the aggregate, when you combine all the games of all the players, the machines will pay out at the RTP.

The casino is free to program the RTP based on the profit margin they need to stay in business. The RTP varies by machine, but in most cases, online casino gambling games and online slot machines have a more player-friendly RTP. Online casinos don’t have the same overhead, so they don’t need to make as much profit.

How Slot Machines Pick Individual Winners

So, RTP is one sense in which slot machines are rigged over the long term. But, while the casino can control the house advantage, it cannot decide who wins or when.

During an individual game, slot machines determine who wins based on random number generators (RNGs). RNGs are pieces of software that create billions of numbers a second. If the number it spits out happens to match a number associated with a jackpot, then you win.

(Technically, these numbers aren’t really random. Most machines cannot create truly random numbers so they are the result of a series of massively complicated math equations. But, these equations are so complicated that, for any practical purpose, the results are random.)

The RNGs are where all the action really is. The spinning wheels on digital or online slot machines are just for show. When the RNG spits out a winning number, you win a jackpot and then the wheels line up, not the other way around.

The casino can program the RTP, but it cannot manipulate the RNG. There are a range of third-party organizations, like eCOGRA, that make sure that doesn’t happen.

Ways Slot Machines Get You to Play More

Overall, the casino wants you to play as long as possible, since the RTP is only guaranteed to work in the long run. If you hit a big jackpot and then leave, the casino loses money. But if you keep playing, you’ll eventually give it all back.

With that goal in mind, there are a variety of ways slot machines are designed to keep you playing. That is another way you could say the machines are rigged.

Hiding the True Odds

As we discussed above, slot machines now rely on RNGs to determine winners, unlike in the old days when the machine had actual wheels with printed symbols. When slot machines had printed wheels, you could do a little math and arrive at a rough estimate of the odds of a jackpot.

But now, since there are no physical wheels, there is no way for a player to see the odds of a jackpot when looking at the machine. The wheels have no real relationship with the game.

Near Misses

Because there are no more physical wheels, casinos are free to program slot machines to take advantage of near misses, or spins that just barely miss a jackpot. This makes the player believe they almost won, when really they were no closer than any other miss.

These near misses increase playing time. B. F. Skinner, one of the most famous psychologists of all time, noted this in 1955, way back in the days of actual reels.

On electronic machines, casinos can program electronic machines to produce near misses more often than they would appear by chance.

Multiline Play

A final innovation that came with electronic machines was multiline play. On modern electronic machines, players can bet on multiple different paylines, unlike old reel machines which typically had only one payline.

Online Slots Rigged

Multiline play can disguise how much a player is losing. If you bet $1 on four different lines, and then win $3 on one hit, you’ve still lost $1. But the slot machine will treat it as a winner and that, again, will encourage the player to keep going.

Find a Reliable Casino

Are Online Slots Rigged Reddit

These three techniques, along with the RTP, are ways a casino can use their slot machines to separate you from your money more efficiently. This is all the evidence you should need for how important it is to find a reputable, trustworthy place to play.

As we discussed above, online gambling games tend to have a better RTP, and the best ones avoid these sort of shady techniques.

Online Slots Are Rigged Against

For help finding a reliable online casino, check out some of our casino reviews, or find more tips on how to play and win in our other blog posts.