Electronic table games at casinos: Do you trust them?
All over the country, casinos are introducing a new rage – electronic table games. These games range from poker to blackjack, even craps. The game plays out on an electronic screen where you can view your chips and cards. You can bet a dollar to five hundred dollars with the touch of a finger. But is it really the same experience as playing with real chips and cards?
Let’s take blackjack for example. You’re in a gambling mood today and you bet $300 on your first hand. You’re dealt King, Queen -- 20. The dealer shows a 3. Feeling pretty good, huh? Next thing you know, he flips over his other card and has a 2. Feeling even better, right? (I think you know where this is going). Now the dealer flips over a Jack, then a 6 -- 21. What runs through your mind? Do you say, “That’s just bad luck” or do you say “The computer is cheating”? It’s a lot easier to say that it’s bad luck when you are dealing with actual cards, but that doesn’t stop people from playing this game like it’s going out of style.
A player at an Indiana casino comments on an electronic craps table – “I’ve been sitting here for about three hours playing craps and at least six times, someone has rolled the dice thirty times and never rolled a 7. It’s almost statistically impossible to do it once, let alone six times. That would never happen at a live table.”
ShuffleMaster is one of the largest distributors of electronic table games in the US. According to their website in regards to one of their products, “Table Master nearly doubles the number of hands played per hour which translates into big winnings for your casino.” While casinos obviously make money by players losing money, how much faith can you put into a casino that installs this system which is fully intended to get you to bet more, and inevitably lose more? ShuffleMaster also mentions that their systems come equipped with the ability for the casino to track players. If the cards are supposed to be completely random each deal, what purpose do they have keeping track of how much each and every player bets and wins/loses?
In an apparent effort to combat suspicions, Hoosier Park, one of Indiana’s top casinos hosting electronic games, has introduced one of the countries first electronic games with actual cards. The system is called Organic Island. Players still use a touch screen to bet and see their cards, but the cards are dealt from an actual deck in the middle of the table. In addition, the game intends to attract younger players by their state of the art design and technology.
So the moral of the story is next time you head to one of these casinos, just think about what is really going on and whether putting your money in the machine is a safe bet in itself.