Many poker players have often wondered: are poker machines rigged? This question arises due to what appears to be an increasingly evident pattern whereby, after winning multiple hands in succession, the machine becomes cold-hearted and refuses to play the river when you need it most – which appears as evidence that the game may indeed be fixed – yet such assumptions fail to account for standard deviation and variance’s potential influence in creating long streaks of garbage beats.
There are various methods a casino could attempt to manipulate their slot machine. One method would be altering its software code; this would enable the casino to pay out more often than expected and is an illegal act that casinos may prosecute for. Unfortunately, changing this software would also require altering reels, number of bonus symbols per spin, and many other aspects of its machine; typically this effort wouldn’t go through this much trouble just to manipulate their slots machines.
Another way a casino could rig its poker machines is to lower the jackpot significantly below what should be. This can be accomplished by depleting wheels of jackpot symbols so that winning the big prize becomes less likely, while making lower sums prizes more common; this tactic has long been employed in carnival games and can have profound psychological repercussions for those participating.
Casinos could manipulate games in three ways. First, by altering their odds or by manipulating certain elements within their environment. Second, by taking measures to rig certain aspects of its games.
One way of increasing the odds of certain hands on a poker machine would be to alter their odds. Unfortunately, this would be hard to accomplish since each hand would involve shuffling and counting individual cards – something no casino is likely to do for video poker machines.
Casinos operate under stringent Gaming Commission regulations and attempting to manipulate poker machines could expose them to license revocation and class action lawsuits from players, not to mention massive house edge increases by using such techniques. Finally, their house edge should already be well known without needing to try increasing it by using fraudulent means such as rigging poker machines.