The Random Number Generator

The thrill of gambling lies in the fact that the outcome of the event is unpredictable. Over the ages humans have developed several devices to create this uncertainty or randomness. The dice and playing cards were perhaps the earliest. The roulette wheel has ruled the casinos for ages. Slot machines are found everywhere from shopping malls to railway stations to casinos.

It was in the last century that mathematicians advocated using a complicated set of calculations to arrive at a set of numbers that had the properties of random numbers. However this process was so cumbersome that it could not be usefully applied. The computer revolution of the 1960s changed that. The most complicated calculations could be performed in seconds and the electronic random number generator was born.

The first gaming application to use the Random Number Generator (RNG) was the slot machine in 1975. One random number was used to represent each reel. If the reel had ten slots, the random number was constrained to be between 1 and 10 and linked to a particular symbol. The computer program, called the Random Number Generator, would generate the numbers and the corresponding symbols would appear on the screen. Initially players avoided electronic slots because they did not trust the virtual reels. They preferred the physically spinning ones that they could actually see. After 1980 this technology gained acceptance. Electronic slots based on the RNG had several advantages. Electromechanical slots could only have a limited number of slots on each reel because of limitations of physical size. The virtual world had no such limitations. Soon there were machines with 25 or even more slots to a reel. Much of the hardware was eliminated and the machines became more compact. Also the RNG produced the winning combination instantly and the time lost in the reels spinning and coming to rest was avoided. The game became much faster.

Theoretically the RNG could be immediately used for other games of chance as well. However it took another 20 years for the boom in online casinos. This is because the other inputs such as Internet technology and the financial and legal framework evolved later.

Today the RNG is at the heart of all online games. In online roulette the RND generates a number between 1 and 33 (for the 33 numbers on the roulette wheel). In online blackjack the RNG generates a number between 1 and 52 (for the 52 cards in the pack). The same principle can be applied to all games of chance. Actually the algorithm generates 32-bit raw numbers, which are then scaled to simulate a roulette wheel or a pack of cards. The RNG ensures that the numbers generated are evenly distributed and not related to each other in any way and also that they are unpredictable. There are independent testing agencies that regularly test the RNG used by gaming sites and certify them for fairness. There are several rigorous tests that are conducted over hundreds of thousands of trials. Hence online players can rest assured that they are getting as fair a game as they expect from brick-and mortar casinos.