RANDOM NUMBER GENERATION
Everything you need to know except the math

by norton weissner
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Casinos have, since the beginning of time, been subject to malpractices. Card decks have been falsely shuffled, slot machines have been rigged, Roulette wheels have been tilted. The law has consequently come down hard on such malpractices, which have become few and far between in the modern era. Since the advent of online gambling, it has become harder to police against gambling malpractices, harder to hold those responsible accountable for their actions, and online gamblers are facing more uncertainty than gamblers in traditional gambling venues ever have before. Fair practice in gambling institutions, such as Las Vegas casinos for instance, is strictly enforced by the law with harsh penalties applied. Online gambling however - especially with US federal prohibition of online gambing forcing online gambling companies offshore and beyond the boundaries of US jurisdiction - is another story. We all know that the house has the edge; what we lovers of online gambling are asking for is a little fairness.

Actually, that is a gross, gross overstatement. The RNG has been around a lot longer than online gambling, has for decades been a subject of study at Berkeley University, has long been used in casino slot machines, and has been at the heart of random number generation used in the crytology of security systems since forever. All modern computers have built-in RNG capability. INTEL have long developed their own RNG technology and since the Pentium III all INTEL CPU chips have included a fully integrated Random Number Generator. But never before - not before the tremendous popularity of online gambling - has the general public taken so much interest in how random numbers are generated and how random it really is. With money directly at stake, the online gambler wants to know how random really is his card hand or his throw of the dice. This is as it should be and vigilant public scrutiny of the generation of randomness can only be healthy for the online gambling industry. Moreover, online gambling venues like to make a big thing about RNG in order to sell their product as a legitimate house of gambling.

RNG technology outputs millions of numbers per second and produces the number it's at when the user interacts, either to put in a coin, pull a lever or click the mouse. This number is then transformed into the appropriate output in terms of the game: either a throw of the dice, or a slot machine sequence, or a card, or whatever. One of the most common questions people ask about the Random Number Generator is: can it be weighted against the advantage of the gambler? For example, can the chances of a high output be reduced if the bettor bets the maximum bet. The answer to this, of course, is yes. Any disreputable gambling venue, online or offline, can rig the odds. Which is why the online gambler needs to be extremely discerning in his choice of gambling outlet, and is why betfactor.com recommends Rumba Casino. Rogue casinos aside, the RNG does produce true randomness and the online gambler at a reputable online gambling venue such as Rumba Casino can be confident that the house edge is the only edge the house has over the gambler.

That deals with the honesty side of the RNG. In short, if an online casino website is legitimate, then the RNG is legitimate and the house edge is as stated. End of story. Well, not quite. The issue of Random Number Generation doesn't quite end there. Once that number has been generated, there are still a number of choices and options. The main case in point is virtual card shuffling. Once the RNG stops, the number is translated into a certain way for the decks to be shuffled and there are billions of different ways a six-pack shoe can be shuffled. There are two ways, however, of proceeding at that point: the single-pass shufffle and the incremental shuffle. The single-pass shuffles all cards at the beginning while the incremental shuffle shuffles the packs - as it were - before each new card is pulled minus the cards which have already left the pack. There is ongoing debate over which of these methods produces the best results.

The RNG is complex technology which has been around as long as computers and is constantly being developed by computer scientists and mathematicians in places such as the University of Berkeley. However, even given the best RNG technology, there are are still gray areas as to how the random numbers should be translated into gambling output. Nevertheless, if the online gambler chooses a reputable online gambling venue, such as Rumba Casino, he can rest assured that the house is using the Random Number Generator to produce the most realistic and honest results in their online casinos.