Provably Fair: An Introduction
Provably fair gambling technology is a method for ensuring the integrity of online gambling games. Everyone recognises that losing is part of gambling just like winning, but nobody wants to get cheated. Provably fair technology is a way for customers to be confident that the games they are playing are legit. Here is how it works.
Provably fair games use encryption technology to demonstrate the legitimate nature of their games. In order to ensure that a game is on the up and up, it is important the result of the said game be determined before wagers being placed. If the result is decided by the bet, then it could be influenced to ensure that the player lost, which is obviously not right. At the same time, the result should not be known prior to the completion of the game because that would be subject to abuse on the other end with people betting with known outcomes and always winning.
How Provably Fair Technology Works
With provably fair technology, the result of the game is given to the player before the game begins, but it is encrypted so that they can’t actually tell what the result is. Then after the bet, they can unencrypt the result and see that it matches what actually happens. So first the result of the game is discovered. Then this result is encrypted using an algorithm based on a specific key. The key to unlocking the encrypted result is provided to the player after the game is over. Then if you wish you can verify that everything was legit by combining both the result as well as the encryption key to verify that you received the same output as was provided to you before the game.
Provably fair technology can be used to ensure the integrity of all sorts of games. You can use this guarantee on slots, card games or roulette. With card games, the deck is shuffled in advance, so the result, which is known and published to the player in encrypted form, is fixed no matter what you do. With slots whether you win or lose and how much you win or lose will be determined in advance of any wagers being placed. With roulette, there is a random number generator used to create a number between one and thirty-six, and that is going to signify where the ball will land. So, in this case, the landing spot is actually given to the player in advance but of course they cannot capitalise on that knowledge without the encryption key.
Innovations in Provably Fair technology
Over the last few years, there have been a lot of different innovations that are used to ensure that online casinos are offering fair games to their customers. Provably fair technology is a major leap in removing some of the secrecy surrounding how casino games work and making sure that the games online casinos offer are legitimate. Another innovation that is making sure that online casinos are providing fair games is the blockchain itself. With Bitcoin transactions, anyone can look at the blockchain and then see where money is coming and going. While casinos do have an edge on the action in their games, the edge is generally pretty small, in the 0.5% to 5% range. One of the things that makes gambling so appealing to players is that often you will walk away a winner. So because financial transactions on the blockchain are public information, it is much easier to audit whether a casino is paying out their customers or not as well as to get a rough idea as to the hold percentages on total deposits.
Being able to verify that a casino is actually paying out winners as well as to get a general idea of the money flowing in and the money flowing out is a great step towards transparency and openness. This sort of information was not available when casinos relied upon credit card or payment processor transactions as they obviously wanted to keep that data secret. Statistical analysis could be used of how much money is going in and how much is going out to determine whether everything is legitimate because the law of large numbers dictates that over a large sample size results will tend to deviate towards their expectation. Given that a busy online casino does take action from a lot of different players making a lot of wagers you are going to expect to see typical results over a longer period, although there is of course always the risk of a high rolling whale skewing the sample because of short-term variance.
There is no question that innovations such as provably fair technology and cryptocurrency transactions are making online gambling more open and honest than ever before. Given that importance of trust between players and casinos, both parties will benefit from these develops, players because they will be able to trust the casinos they are playing at and casinos because the odds are set in their favour so even with legitimate games they are very likely to win in the long run. In the long run, these developments are mutually beneficial to all parties.