What is the tech behind online roulette games?

The internet is awash with online casinos offering an array of games. One of the most popular is online roulette. A simple game that is purely luck-based and requires only a minimal effort to understand the rules and betting options, it is easy for people to get started playing online roulette.

Online roulette bonuses

That’s good for online casino businesses because roulette famously delivers a significant edge to the house. And, paradoxically, that’s good for the player too: online roulette brings in a steady stream of income, but its much lower cost (compared to land-based casinos, due to lower overheads), online casinos can afford to offer players tantalising deals. To attract players in a highly competitive market, sites offer temporary odds and bonuses. With so many sites and offers, it can be difficult to find the best ones, though there is lots of information here on bonus types – such as deposit match bonuses and free spins – and which providers offer what.

Random number generation

Nevertheless, hosting online roulette games poses a number of technical challenges, such as how one generates the random numbers required to have a proper game, and how to beat online bots.

Online casinos use software programmes to mimic the random generation of numbers that a real-life roulette wheel produces. The software continuously produces a sequence of numbers, and when the ‘wheel’ stops, the latest number from the sequence is chosen as the number the ‘ball’ lands on.

Is it truly random?

This software doesn’t actually produce a random sequence of numbers – that would be technically impossible – but rather a sequence of numbers whose pattern is so complex and close to pure randomness that no-one would be able to anticipate what number it would choose next. This is identical to roulette in land-based casinos, where the number the ball lands on is not strictly random, but rather determined by all the forces that act on the ball, such as the force with which it is thrown, the position and speed of the wheel, and many others. In practice, the combination of forces becomes too complex to anticipate, so the number is essentially random.

Beating the bots

So online roulette wheels do follow a pattern – albeit one that is so complex as to be identical to randomness to the human eye. But could a bot figure out the pattern? Well, AI systems are becoming more sophisticated and, theoretically, any pattern that is non-random could be discerned by an observer. But in order to do that with online roulette, the bot would have to observe thousands of games, if not millions, before analysing the data it gathers using profoundly complex techniques, then generating an appropriate betting strategy.

bots

Can bots win?

It is very unlikely this can be done. One obstacle to this is the sheer amount of programming skill required. Secondly, each bot would only be able to learn the pattern for one game on one site. Third, online casinos monitor for bots and suspend accounts showing suspicious activity. Fourth, online casino sites have absolutely free reign to change the random number generation software at any time, rendering a bot instantly useless.

Online casinos offer new opportunities for businesses and players but all that requires some complicated tech under the hood.