Trustworthiness Of Online Casinos

November 20th, 2008

The issue of the trustworthiness of online casinos is one that comes up fairly often, as it well should. After all, it is your hard earned money that we are talking about here, and for most people it would only be logical to make sure that the online casino that they decide to eventually sign up with is as legitimate and as above board as possible. If you are only just getting started in the online gambling pursuit, finding the answer to this concern becomes all the more important. Gambling in general is of course fraught with risk, and in sense, that is a large part of the thrill. That being said, losing your money to an unscrupulous gambling establishment is not quite the type of risk that makes for a satisfactory gambling experience, so it is important to ensure the safety and reliability of the online casino in question.

Most gamblers are by nature a very superstitious lot, and some can even be said to border on the paranoid. As you can imagine, a lot of stories and rumors have surfaced regarding the suspicion that certain online casinos that are rigged, making it virtually impossible for anyone to win when playing in them. Adding fuel to these suspicions is the seemingly frequent occurrences of events that are supposedly random yet show up with some regularity.

This is a common enough misconception that can be explained by a number of factors, among them:

Online casinos typically allow you to play a lot more games in an hour than land-based casinos do. Because playing in an online casino is essentially a solitary activity, you don’t have to go through the various aspects of playing in a land based casino such as waiting for other players to place their bets or to be paid. The virtual nature of online casinos also means that there are no actual chips, cards or balls to deal with, so the process of setting up for the next round of the game will go by much quicker. There is no ‘clearing up’ between games so to speak, cards are dealt much faster, Roulette wheels spin in far less time, and the dice are always ready to be rolled at a moment’s notice.

Because of this faster paced online casino action, the frequency of events that may be considered unusual is greatly increased. Certain events will simply occur with greater regularity in an online casino than in a ‘real world’ casino. The probability of these events occurring is not actually increased, but the actual time in which they occur certainly does, given the quick nature of the game.

Let’s take for an example the Roulette wheel. In a typical game of Roulette, the chances of getting 6 consecutive blacks are roughly 1 in 64. Now, if the time it takes for the Roulette wheel to spin in a real casino is two minutes, getting 6 consecutive blacks will occur only once every two hours. An online casino will of course allow you to play much faster than that, so if you consider that you can play 3 rounds a minute in an online casino, the chances of 6 consecutive blacks turning up becomes once every twenty minutes. Of course the probability of that happening in both situations remains the same, but because of the fast pace of the online casino game, some people will have the impression that the online casino game is rigged.

Playing online casino games alone tends to affect your judgment. As we mentioned earlier in this article, playing online casino games alone tends to leave you with the impression that events occur more often than they should. In addition to that effect, playing online casino games alone also affects players psychologically.

Consider for example playing a round or two of blackjack in a land based casino. If you are playing with four other players, there is pretty good chance that someone in the table will win eventually even if you do not win yourself. You may well end up playing all night without winning a single hand, but as long as you see another player winning, you are led into thinking that the casino is being fair.

Contrast that experience with playing online casino games, where you are solely focused on your own results. In this scenario, since you do not see any other player winning–nor do you see the casino losing–the losing hands that you have thus far received will seem to be highly improbable. The conclusion that so many players reach in this situation then is that the online casino must again be rigged.

Some online casinos did actually cheat in the early days. Now here’s where we have to face up to the facts. The truth of the matter is that in the early days of online casino gambling, some establishments were known to have cheated. That was truly a dark period for the online casino industry as whole, and the damage that it caused in terms of customer trust was considerable. It took many years of careful control and vigilance before online casinos managed to shake off this unsavory reputation.

Fortunately, things are a lot different nowadays, and online casinos can lay claim to the fact that they are part of one of the most regulated businesses around. Those shady online casinos of years past have largely ceased to exist, and any new online casinos that are suspected of engaging in illegal activities and unfair practices are quickly investigated and blacklisted if need be by online casino governing bodies.

The bottom line regarding trusted online casinos
The important thing to realize in all this is that by and large, virtually all online casinos conduct all aspects of their operations in a manner that is fair, trustworthy and in a way that complies with all laws and regulations. Of course it is still in your best interests to check out all the various options in online casinos before you begin to gamble online, and stick with the gambling establishments that are duly licensed, regulated and have a good reputation.

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