A whole lot has been written about the honesty of land-based slot machines. An excellent article by Steve Bourie is titled, "Are Slot Machines Honest?" and originally appeared within the 1999 American Casino Guide. (It may be found trusted online slot gambling by searching for the title in Google or Yahoo!.) Physical, land-based slot machines have a lot of "variations" (being polite) than can deceive the player. Simply, they may be all illegal and do not happen. But read the article, closely.

At the same time, online casino slots use an electronic "random number generator" or RNG, operating inside a very large computer program that manages the game graphics, the player accounts of individuals who join the game, the statistics of every hand played, and much more. The random number generator is hard-coded software instructions that do not change. There's absolutely no "sense switch" (see the Bourie article) that can be flipped to give players worse odds. Regarding control parameters, each use of the RNG is the same as the last use, and also will be the exact same as the next use. The numbers will come out randomly, but the pattern of randomness never changes. This really is a true benefit of software-based online casino slots.

Land-based slot machines may also have payout percentages as low as 83%, which is just not true with online casino slots. In online gaming, each machine has the same winning percentage as the other machines. You can see the payout percentages for many online gaming sites, and you shall see which it rarely drops below 95% - that's, the home makes a 5% profit, on the regular. Actually, most casinos can document that their payout percentages will be in the 97% - 98% range. This means you may spend per hour, gamble your $100 stake about 3 times, as well as on the regular it will cost you $7.50. But players do not gamble to be average: the true reward will be the high-paying win. And also the well-paying win is balanced, as always, by a number of players who lose and finance that win.

So are online casino slots fair? Yes, they clearly are. The software that operates the games is tested regularly by independent testing laboratories (look for logos at the bottom of the casino website), and no game is individually controllable to be biased. Which is a far cry from the matter with land-based slot machines, appropriately called "one-armed bandits".

Players improve odds, they get absolute consistency across all games - but nobody can guarantee a win every time. That's just the nature of gambling, and that's part of the thrill.

So the next time you want to play a slot machine, even if there is a land-based casino right next door, you are better advised to go to your computer and play the on-line casino slots. They are a far better bet.