Many Commonly Held Assumptions About Online Casinos Are Actually Casino Myths
The world of casino gambling is full of superstitions, conspiracy-theories and urban myths. These range from ideas which are simply wacky (players watched via security who can ‘assign’ big wins) to plausible but wrong: if you had continued on slot ‘X’ it would have been you winning that big jackpot. This page looks at some of the most common casino myths.
First up, the common myth that casinos add oxygen to their rooms is covered. After this, the ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ tables misconception, followed by some myths surrounding slots. I have looked at the fun idea of remote-controlled roulette wheels after that before finally returning to the cards to dispel the incorrect idea that card-counting is illegal.
Oxygen Is Added To Perk You All Up!
This is just plain incorrect. I’ll state it loud and clear, it would be illegal to pump extra oxygen into the casino floor to prevent people getting tired and stay at the games longer. This simply does not happen.
There are some other ways in which the casinos legally encourage you to stay longer in their games. These include ensuring that there are no windows (so you can’t see it getting dark) and no clocks, so that you lose track of time more easily. Free drinks are provided to keep you happy while you play. This of course includes alcoholic drinks, which the casinos hope will lead you to take bigger risks and even make more mistakes.
Hot And Cold Tables
This myth takes various forms, though it’s based around the idea that a particular table can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for the players. For example a Craps table may be cold, never allowing players to build up a good run of wins and once it is cold it will always be cold.
Of course, the reality is that each roll of the dice or deal of cards is a statistically independent event. Streaks can happen, though, over time every table will revert towards the average as far as wins and losses are concerned. The myth of a cold table is just the human brain trying to impose patterns on what is really just statistical noise.
If you believe a table is hot, you should play there regardless of this being a myth because it will be more fun!
Slot Machine Myths
There are a lot of myths surrounding the slots. The most common ones involve the house adjusting the payouts in different ways to suit their circumstances. For example, that the machines visible from the entrance pay out more regularly to encourage people to play or that the house increases the payouts when they first open to buy positive publicity from those initial players.
This is simply not true as the machines all have the same payouts and house edge built in.
The ‘would have won it’ idea is also a myth. Say you change slot and someone else starts to play the one you left and quickly wins a big payout. Many people curse their luck here, thinking they should have stayed on that machine. The way that random number generators (RNGs) work dispels this myth. Each time you spin, an RNG creates a brand new key and there is nothing to say that the random numbers generated would have been in the same sequence had you stayed.
Finally for slots, the myth that a particular machine is ‘due’ a payout also assumes there is something more than a RNG working behind the scenes. A machine can be on a ‘cold streak’ and so ‘due a big payout’ in your mind, but this does not stop the fact that each new spin is an independent event controlled by a newly generated set of completely random numbers.
Remote Controlled Roulette Wheels
This one gets a little more bizarre for me. With many players claiming that the house can use magnets hidden inside roulette wheels to control where the ball lands to avoid having to make big payouts. This is simply untrue as machines are purely mechanical and checked regularly for even the smallest bias. The spin itself is far too random (bounces for example) for the dealer to have any influence too.
Counting Cards Is Illegal and Can Land You in Jail
Card counting is a way that blackjack players turn the house advantage into their advantage. This involves tracking the proportion of small and big cards in the deck and then increasing bets when the player has a mathematical advantage.
Casinos do not like this and will go out of their way to make it difficult to do. For example, by increasing the number of decks used in Blackjack from 1 to between 6 and 8. They will also ban anyone suspected of counting cards from their casino, even invoking trespass laws if that player returns.
The actual counting of the cards is in no way illegal, it is just that the casinos do not like players who gain an advantage over them.