For games like slots, where house edge is determined by the casino, online casinos usually offer higher odds than the land based ones. For other games like blackjack, house edge depends only on the rules, therefore, a game of blackjack with the same rules will have equal house edge in online and land based casinos. To guarantee reliability and fairness of the games, many online casinos purchase their software from reputable companies such as Microgaming, Playtech, Cryptologic, Wager Works, or OddsOn, though a little research into credentials of an online casino site you plan to play at will do no harm. Online casino software uses a random number generator to generate the results of the games. It is impossible to manipulate or predict the numbers it will generate, therefore, while all results depend on these numbers, casino games are fair. Gaming software from reputable companies is periodically inspected by independent auditors to make sure all results are totally random.
There are three types of online casinos web-based casinos and downloadable casinos. Many online casinos offer both downloadable and web-based software.
Downloadable online casinos
Most online casinos offer downloadable casino software. This software must be downloaded and installed on your computer in order to play casino games. The software is totally independent. It connects to the casino site and transfers information through its own modules. The advantage of this way is that once downloaded it initiates instantly, without reloading graphics and sounds, which may happen with web-based software. Web-based software may also be limited to the restrictions of the plug-in it works through, so some features may be reduced or lost.
Web-based online casinos
Web-based casino games are loaded directly to a browser window through browser plug-ins such as Flash Player, Shockwave Player or Java Virtual Machine. If your browser preferences are set properly, the data received by these plug-ins, like video, sounds and program codes, is stored at your temporary folder and must not be reloaded each time you enter the online casino, but in some cases the data is not stored or is deleted after a certain period of time, and you need to wait for this data to load again. On the other hand, these plug-ins usually limit the access to your computer, so playing web-based games guarantees you will not get any adware or spyware together with your gaming application. Besides you do not need to install any additional software, which may slow down your operating system and will add extra icons to your Start menu.
