Online Bingo Fairness

The fairness of any game is crucial to the integrity of that game. No online bingo player wants to pay money for tickets in a bingo game that they have little or no chance of winning. Fraud is not good for the bingo industry either – even a few rogue operators could severely damage the reputation of the game as a whole, leaving genuine and fair companies with fewer customers and less profit.

Offline bingo needs to be just as fair as the online game, but the fact that players can see exactly what is happening during an offline game makes fraud less likely. For example, traditional bingo players will generally all be viewing the same number selection machine, they will be able to compare their tickets with those of other players and they will be able to see the person who wins each prize in each game.

The same does not apply to online bingo. When you are playing online you have to trust that the bingo numbers are being called in a random manner. You have to trust that other players have bingo tickets with different numbers on (as opposed to everyone playing the same losing tickets). You also have to trust that the individuals winning really do exist, and are not simply the names of people on staff at the bingo site. That’s a great deal of trust that needs to be invested, so legitimate companies employ the following measures to ensure they meet the expectations of players:

• Random Number Generation. A Random Number Generator (also referred as RNG) is a special piece of software that is designed to generate numbers at random in such a manner that those numbers cannot be predicted. Effectively this guarantees that the numbers called during an online bingo game are just as fair to all players as those called at a traditional club.

• External Auditing. Online bingo companies do not audit themselves but are instead audited by outside professionals. These professional auditors go through the records of tickets purchased, the numbers called, prizes won and paid to players, and all other variables before certifying that everything is within order. Because the reputation of the external auditor rests entirely on their ability to produce reliable, exact and objective data, we need never doubt the figures published if the auditing company is itself of good merit.

• Arbitration. When a player believes that they have cause for complaint, the customer service team at a fair bingo site will look into the matter and, if they cannot resolve it to your satisfaction, you may opt to have the matter settled by arbitration. This is where a third party takes a look at the situation objectively and makes an impartial decision based on the facts at hand.

When you play bingo online you should do so only with those sites that employ the above ideas. Refer to the article entitled Choosing An Online Bingo Site for other information that will help ensure you are able to enjoy a safe and completely fair game. Should you ever encounter a site which you think is operating in an unfair or blatantly fraudulent way, you can do both yourself and the online bingo industry a great service by reporting the matter immediately.

 

Fairness Last Updated: 06/06/2007