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November 24, 2014, 05:03:55 PM |
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The first thing to understand is that "provably fair" does not mean that there is no "house edge". It only means that it can be proven that the game follows the rules that are advertised.
Lets imagine a game where you place a bet and then roll a single perfectly balanced six sided die. In this game, you "win" when you roll a 1, 2, or 3. You "lose" when you roll a 4, 5, or 6. On a losing roll, the casino keeps your entire bet. On a winning roll, the casino allows you to keep your bet AND they pay you an additional sum that is 50% of what you bet. In other words, if you bet $10 and lose, they casino keeps the full $10. If you bet $10 and win, then you get your $10 back as well as an additional $5. These rules are published in the casino where anybody can access them.
If it could be proven that the die is truly perfectly balanced, and that the casino isn't doing anything to influence the outcome of the roll then you would have a "provably fair" game, even though the casino isn't paying enough on the "win" to make up for the equal number of "losses".
Assuming that you understand this, the "provably fair" games that most online casinos offer involve some mathematical or cryptographical way of proving that they did not influence whether you "win" or "lose" a bet. The method of verifying depends on the casino, since they each have their own method. It will generally require some technical knowledge about how to verify a hash value as well as some understanding about whether the source they are using for input can be relied on to be unpredictable and evenly distributed.
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