Chance-governed Activities: Can Gamblers Beat Randomness
Randomness is an integral part of gambling. Players will bet for or against the chance of a random event happening, landing a certain number on roulette for example, or a football result coming in. It’s all part of the experience, seeing how you fare against lady luck. Traditionally, casinos generate randomness through various means, such as rolling dice or shuffling a deck of cards.
While the way casinos create randomness has changed as the gambling industry moves even further into the digital domain, the goal of a player has not. To win consistently, players must beat randomness. Can it be done? Let’s find out.
What is Randomness?
Before we can figure out how to beat randomness, it’s important to define what randomness means so that we can truly understand it. Randomness, or chance, plays a part in all forms of gambling. It levels the playing field, ensuring that one player does not hold an advantage over another.
Randomness guarantees fairly distributed outcomes. It lacks patterns or cycles, and outcomes should not be affected by previous outcomes or affect subsequent outcomes. There are ways to give yourself an advantage over randomness, these can be strategic playing methods or financial techniques such as the use of casino bonus sites to increase your winning chances.
A New Random
For centuries, randomness in betting was generated through devices like roulette wheels, dice, and cards. However, the face of the gambling industry has changed dramatically, and new digital games call for new ways to create randomness.
Random number generators (RNGs) are the key to the success of online gambling. RNGs are algorithms that online casinos can use to generate completely random numbers, they are used all over online gambling and iGaming, from digital card games to slot machines.
To get more specific, many online casinos will use what are known as pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs). What sets PRNGs apart from RNGs is that the former does not require external input to produce a random number, doing so only with the algorithm and what is known as a seed number. PRNGs are used to determine what symbols land on the reels in slot games, the numbers rolled in dice games, and where the ball lands on the roulette wheel.
Can Randomness Be Beaten?
According to online casinos and gambling platforms, randomness can’t be beaten. Digital systems used to generate random numbers for use in online gambling are simply too sophisticated and complex for humans to predict with any kind of consistent accuracy. Unless that is, you somehow have backend access to the software and tools used by the casino to generate their numbers.
Obviously, most people won’t have access to that, so what can be done to get around randomness and stack the odds in your favour?
Strategies
While randomness might not be beatable, there are methods and techniques players can use to get around it, maximising chances of winning and reducing potential losses.
Let’s look at roulette and a strategy that can be employed to beat the random element.
The Martingale strategy is a commonly used Roulette strategy that makes use of statistics and probability to maximise wins. When using this strategy, players wager on even-money bets like 1-18, 19-36, Red, Black, Odd, and Even. These bets may have the lowest payouts in the game, but they come with the highest odds of winning. To use the Martingale Strategy, players should bet on one of these even-money bets with a set stake repeatedly until a loss, when the bet is then doubled. Once the loss is recovered, the original stake is returned.
Using this strategy uses probability to give a player an advantage over randomness. Since losing in successive streaks on even-money bets is statistically unlikely, players can incrementally increase their winnings with low risk.
Conclusion
Without randomness, there would be no gambling. It’s an inherent part of how the game works, ensuring fair outcomes and results. Naturally, players have looked for ways to beat randomness for centuries, hoping to crack the code that will lead to big winnings. As it stands, randomness can’t be truly beaten. However, by carefully analysing statistics and probability players can turn the odds slightly more in their favour.
