How do random number generators work? The heart and soul of every online casino and online poker room is the random number generator. Also known in the industry as RNG, the Random Number Generator is responsible for generating outcomes on the various casino games. Roulette, blackjack, slots, video poker, and even actual player vs player poker, are entirely dependant on the RNG. Therefore, the RNG is subjected to audits by an independent authority on a regular basis, in order to make sure that the casino/poker room doesn’t use it to create an illicit advantage (to win more money or to collect more poker rake by giving certain players an edge over others).
Once it finds everything is as fair as it should be, the auditing entity proceeds to give the casino a certificate. The casino will then use that certificate to prove to its players that it is a fair and trustworthy representative of the online gambling industry. The same goes for online poker rooms as well, whose rake collection methods are confirmed by the certificate. While in real life, generating a random number is as simple as rolling a pair of dice or spinning a roulette wheel (credit goes to Blaise Pascal for that one – he invented the roulette for the specific purpose of generating random numbers), the same cannot be said about the world of computers. Computers are built on non random occurrences and numbers. Take any number and churn it through an unfathomable number of various mathematical operations. In the end, the computer will spit out a result, which will always be the same regardless how many times you run the calculations.
There’s only one way to alter the outcome: by altering the number fed into the system. Every time there’s a different number fed into the equation, the result will be a different one. The programmer can tell the computer to use a constantly changing number for the equation: its clock is a good source of such numbers. This way, a more or less random number can be generated. The problem with it is, that because it depends on the computer’s internal clock, the program will produce certain time-related patterns. Therefore it cannot be used as the random number generator of a casino game: the players would discover the patterns and they would exploit them too. Another solution to generating a random number would be through the number Pi. Pi is a number featuring an infinite string of decimals. It is also an irrational string, which means that it features no patterns whatsoever. The computer could use a clock to tell it when to jump into the number Pi and fetch a decimal from it. That way, players would never be able to spot any patterns in the RNG’s results.
Do casinos use Pi for their RNGs then? Chances are they’re not. It is more than a little impractical to use this approach. It is much more likely that the casinos’ RNGs use a very intricate formula, based on the above principle (not the method itself) to come up with random numbers. Why can’t the casino just make its RNG algo public then? It would be so much easier to prove that it’s 100% fair indeed than through the audit methods described above…Casinos can’t let the public get their hands on the center piece of their operation and livelihood for several reasons, one of which is that by experimenting directly with the algo, players would find it much easier to spot possible exploitable faults in the results. As a matter of fact, the secrecy surrounding the RNG is so big that the algorithm is periodically changed, to nix the efforts of anyone who may have spotted anything exploitable in it. The secrecy is fully justified though: at the end of the day, the casino’s very existence depends on it.
