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What are your chances of winning at online casinos?

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Probably, one of the biggest concerns shared by people playing at online casinos is the low probability of winning money. Most of them believe that this form of gambling is doomed to fail. Visitors of online casinos are usually not sure if they can trust such websites. They have doubts about their fairness and often think that casinos on the Internet are rigged. If you have the same fears, keep reading the article to find out whether they make sense.

Is online gambling rigged?

We all know that gambling websites are businesses and their ultimate goal is to make a profit. In order to earn money, they need to engage their customers to come back and invest their time in the game. This means that website owners have to allow their customers to enjoy the game, which is possible only when they feel safe and protected. Hence, it’s not wise for gambling websites to put users’ wins at risk. What’s more, some legal regulations ensure that the games are run ethically, so online casinos shouldn’t break them in order not to lose income.

Still, because the main goal is to make a profit, people who don’t win every game are suspicious about online games. They build various theories supporting this belief. Some of the most popular ones include the idea that wins are structured to keep people playing longer or some concepts about the number of bad beats.

Of course, only you decide whether to believe in such theories or not, but frankly speaking, there is no real evidence supporting them. What’s more, there are some ways to calculate your real chances of winning at online casinos. Read more about them below!

Odds

1. Calculating fractional odds

Obviously, fractional odds are written as a fraction of 5/2, 8/1, and so on. When you play them, it’s really easy to identify your chances of winning, here is why:  if you wager on the second number, then the first number wins, which means that you’ll win $8 if you bet $1. Imagine, the odds are 5/2, what would you have if you wagered $4? You’ll win $10 in this case.  Sounds quite simple, doesn’t it?

2. Converting into percentages

With the help of a short formula, you can convert odds into percentages. Just look:  probability = B/(A+B), where A and B equal the first and second numbers of fractional odds respectively.  Let’s take the 9/1 odds and calculate the formula, where A is 9 and B equals 1. Here is what we have: 1/(10+1)=0.09. After multiplying 0.09 by 100 percent, we can see that  the probability of  winning is 9 percent.

Slots

As you might know, each spin on a slot game is made with the help of a random number generator. Slots are extremely popular among gamblers not for their captivating themes but for payback ratios. Can you believe that some of the highest payback ratios account for 98 percent? But still, you should note that slots have a negative player advantage. What does it mean? In other words, the casino will always win in the long run regardless of your betting strategy.

If you want to know your chances for winning, you should find out what theoretical return to a player is and which symbols pay the top cash prizes. Also, you need to take into account the number of available bonus games or free spins. What’s more, if you use this link and check whether your online casino has low deposits, you can add one more helpful factor to your formula of success. If you are wondering where you can get the information about RTP and symbols, you just need to click on the Paytable (?) or help screen.

In fact, the payout percentages of slots can be somewhere between 90 percent and 98 percent. If you are playing a slot with a house edge of 96 percent, it means that you can win $96 for every $100 you wager. It’s important to note that the house edge of slots offered at online casinos is much higher than that in traditional casinos. You can compare them yourself:  the RTPs of some slot machines in Las Vegas are sometimes as low as 73 percent. Interestingly, the biggest slot jackpot ever won in the world is $39,710,826.36. To get this amount of money, the player managed to overcome the odds of 16 million to one.

Final thoughts

You’ve probably heard about the following principle: the better you become at something the luckier you get. This rule applies to playing online casino games as well. So if you want to improve your chances of winning, you have to understand the game’s strategy, odds, and the right moment to quit. This is possible to do only if you keep playing and analyzing your games.

Story by Nathan Grohman

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